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A Hundred and Twenty-Eight Pennies
Sep. 11th, 2006 10:15 amI desperately needed a cigarette after I dropped Robin off at school this morning.
This was the morning the entire International School of Monterey middle school was going off on their retreat – the entire middle school except Robin – and I felt awful for him, and at the same time knew: he brought it on himself.
Of course I think the staff are experts at passive aggressive behavior, clueless on how to deal with a sensitive, brilliant, creative kid. The International School of Monterey is a school for robots, which makes it a bad fit for Robin. They institutionalize the celebration of diversity but diversity for them is something straight out of the pages of a coloring book. If it doesn't fit their consensually pounded out stereotypes, then it's not diversity, it's individuality, a plague on their school!
I fault myself for not recognizing this earlier but now it's a month into the semester and I just can't see pulling him out.
So on the one hand the school is a bad fit for him. On the other hand, he does need to learn impulse control sooner rather than later. He's almost twelve. Actions have consequences and he's got to learn that. The older you are, the harder that lesson is to learn.
Which doesn't mean that I don't think his seventh grade teacher is a dreadfully disorganized and petty vindictive person; incapable of modeling the very behaviors she's supposed to be indoctrinating these children to display. But you can't ask someone who is uncomfortable supervising your child to act in loco parentis and sadly I could not volunteer to be one of the adult chaperons.
So he can't go.
I feel so bad for him. The hardest part of being a parent is the certain knowledge that inevitably your child is going to feel pain and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it.
Anyway I needed a cigarette.
And I didn't have any matches because usually I don't smoke before noon.
I pulled into a gas station, walked into the convenience store. "Do you have a book of matches?" I asked the woman behind the counter. Big bouffant hair-do, little squinty pig eyes.
"We don't give out matches," she smirked. "I'll sell you a lighter."
"Why don't you do that then," I said.
The lighter came to a buck twenty-eight.
And I had a hundred and twenty-eight pennies in my change purse, which I counted out slowly over the next ten minutes, costing her at least two sales in the process.
She was fuming.
"Have a nice day!" I said finally and trotted back out to my car. Stared at myself in the rearview mirror expecting to find the Hulk glaring back. But all I saw was a tired, middle-aged woman who looked as though she desperately wanted to cry.
This was the morning the entire International School of Monterey middle school was going off on their retreat – the entire middle school except Robin – and I felt awful for him, and at the same time knew: he brought it on himself.
Of course I think the staff are experts at passive aggressive behavior, clueless on how to deal with a sensitive, brilliant, creative kid. The International School of Monterey is a school for robots, which makes it a bad fit for Robin. They institutionalize the celebration of diversity but diversity for them is something straight out of the pages of a coloring book. If it doesn't fit their consensually pounded out stereotypes, then it's not diversity, it's individuality, a plague on their school!
I fault myself for not recognizing this earlier but now it's a month into the semester and I just can't see pulling him out.
So on the one hand the school is a bad fit for him. On the other hand, he does need to learn impulse control sooner rather than later. He's almost twelve. Actions have consequences and he's got to learn that. The older you are, the harder that lesson is to learn.
Which doesn't mean that I don't think his seventh grade teacher is a dreadfully disorganized and petty vindictive person; incapable of modeling the very behaviors she's supposed to be indoctrinating these children to display. But you can't ask someone who is uncomfortable supervising your child to act in loco parentis and sadly I could not volunteer to be one of the adult chaperons.
So he can't go.
I feel so bad for him. The hardest part of being a parent is the certain knowledge that inevitably your child is going to feel pain and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it.
Anyway I needed a cigarette.
And I didn't have any matches because usually I don't smoke before noon.
I pulled into a gas station, walked into the convenience store. "Do you have a book of matches?" I asked the woman behind the counter. Big bouffant hair-do, little squinty pig eyes.
"We don't give out matches," she smirked. "I'll sell you a lighter."
"Why don't you do that then," I said.
The lighter came to a buck twenty-eight.
And I had a hundred and twenty-eight pennies in my change purse, which I counted out slowly over the next ten minutes, costing her at least two sales in the process.
She was fuming.
"Have a nice day!" I said finally and trotted back out to my car. Stared at myself in the rearview mirror expecting to find the Hulk glaring back. But all I saw was a tired, middle-aged woman who looked as though she desperately wanted to cry.
