Open House

Em and Mo go to different schools this year, but it's the same sort of school (middle), so Open House was the same night and time. Reasonable, I suppose, the district would assume siblings in the same grades would attend the same school.

But the artist formerly known as Frau Lobster moved across a district boundary recently. Mo's classroom is only at the school they both went to last year, so she didn't switch. And Em wanted to stay in the same school, and could easily have gotten a transfer to do so, but they won't bus her in to it. And since four out of five school days she lacks someone who can regularly drive her, and since it's way to far to walk, she's the New Kid at the other middle school.



I hadn't given much though to the open house. I might even have missed it (bad Daddy, I know), but Em knew her Mom was going to the one at her sister's school. I'd run into a store while the girls sat tight the other night and when I came out, getting into the car I found my elbow resting on the schedule for Em's Open House.




The fact that she didn't want to risk just asking me, that she felt the need to plant such a strong hint, told me what I had to do. I had to make Open House and I had to make hers.



She said she wanted to make a good impression, and I said, 'So you brought me???'

I had on my new, louder-than-bombs Hawaiian shirt, I had my camera (of course), and I'm me. This is the same guy who walked Mo to her first class with a fake cigar that very morning, just to make it hot for people. I'm not truly that bad a father, but I am not invisible, and invisibility is something Emily wants more than anything at this point in life. She doesn't want to be that weird kid.



So anyway, there were clickers. These were little remote control devices you use to take quizzes. The question is on the screen at the front of the room, and you can see when you've clicked an answer, when you've changed and answer, and eventually, when you've missed the answer.

The quiz they gave us parents was on the Olympics, and since I'm boycotting them I was astonished that I got almost all the answers right.

Also, they've no crammed eight hours into a seven hour day. With lunch. Oh, and gym is now co-ed. Em was appalled that only three other 'sevvies' were in her gym class, but it also spans grades, and there are eighth grade girls in there as well. And if I understood a third of what the gym teachers had to say, everyone gets graded on a random basis, so it doesn't matter if they're all mixed together.

Hopefully I didn't humiliate Em too much with my me-ness.



I was impressed to see Em's locker. It's only been a week since school starts, and it's already a little messy. She's a prodigy that way, takes after her old man.