This Stuff Only Happens To Me!

Have you ever felt like your kids school’s teachers and staff think you are disheveled, bonkers or possibly a stripper?  Well, after the story I am about to tell you you will realize that my kids principal and school counselor probably think I am all three.

The night before the first day of school and because this was our first year of being car riders and to two schools no less, I cleaned out the Suburban as the teachers will get a first hand look inside at the schools drop off and pick up lines.

I wouldn’t want them to see how we REALLY live.

Knowing I will finally have time to do some decorating while they are off learning I pile grocery bags of fabric that I have in my house, pieces of granite we have, cabinet door fronts we have had built…ok piles of examples of colors and pillows and wood…all over my front seat to make it easy to grab what I need and ponder while in the lines at school.  The plan is to sneak off to the fabric stores while I’m kid free. I’m thinking I’m so well prepared and getting something done while sitting.  It was good to think so highly of myself for A DAY…

On the first day of school I’m picking up at the elementary school and the principal is out walking the car line.  Keep in mind I’m still gun-shy of all teachers and principals after my less than exemplary behavior as a child.  

And here she comes to talk to me, while I’m in the car, and at my window and not at one of the windows where the car is clean…

she comes to the “a homeless person lives in this car” window.  

As I’m shrinking in my seat as she asks why I don’t have “the tag” with my child’s name and school hanging from my rear view mirror. I say (remember my kids were always bus riders), “I don’t have one.”

She is making the poop face, (like all principals do;) at my pile of house samples all over the front of my car that looks like I’m a hoarder.  I then say, “Where do we get them?”

She says, “At the open house. Did his teacher not give you one?”

Ok, here’s where I wish I could lie, I say, “We didn’t go to open house.” I am now making the poop face.

We go to all open houses. We’ve never missed one. For the love of God my first grader begged not to go and I have been to them there five years in a row. We know the teacher and made a decision to skip this one and I walked him in on the morning of the first day. Anyway, she continues with her nose scrunched up and handwrites his name on a tag (something tells me she wanted them all computer printed).

I spend the next several days saying to myself, I wish I had fewer “New Adventures of the Old Christine” moments…They only get better because that next Monday morning at the car rider drop off line the school counselor opens the door for Peter. This is the same clean backseat from a few from a few days ago.

Except that the entire time I’m saying goodbye to Peter and good morning to the counselor she is staring at the backseat floor right behind me, you know the spot the driver cannot see.  She too is making the teacher “poop face”.  

At the next stop sign I take off my seat belt and look around to find my husbands bright red gym bag stuffed so full it cannot be zipped up and a pile of black hair sticking out all over the floor of the Suburban. It is a black wig that we all know my husband wore on stage last Saturday night, with our friends at a Hospice fundraiser, dressed up as Kiss…to raise money and make people laugh. It now looks like a decapitated head in my backseat shoved in a gym bag or some kind of weird kinky thing or I can’t think of a reason that isn’t during Halloween week to have a long black wig in a duffel bag at the feet of your first grader. Sometimes I feel like I am Old Christine or Elaine from Seinfeld.

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