Another school year is winding down. As with most school years, we are ending this one as frazzled versions of our former selves.
At the beginning of the year, I would wake my daughter up in the morning so she could get ready for school. After a few weeks of arguing about getting up, we decided it would be best to get her a clock/radio with an alarm. Unfortunately, the only radio station that had good reception in her bedroom was a local country station. This year we solved the problem of her getting up in the morning, but now she comes upstairs singing the lyrics, “Tonight is bottoms up. Get ’em up. Hey y’all whatever ya’ sippin’ get it up in the air. Bottoms up.” We have to find a new radio station for her to listen to.
Amazingly, my daughter never missed the bus all year. There were some close calls. There were also several days where her brother and sister would walk out the front door to say goodbye to their sister and to show the world their birthday suits. There was also the time I chased the bus halfway down the street with the class stuffed animal in my hands the day it was due to be returned. The bus never saw me, so I had to do a “walk of shame” back to my house holding a stuffed coyote. We also survived those frigid winter mornings walking to the bus stop on a six-inch wide path I’d shoveled out the day before.
I remember helping her pack her backpack on the first day of school. Everything was new, in its place, and clean. There were a couple of pencils, her folder and an assignment notebook. Now if you dared to open her backpack you would find, a weeks worth of crumpled papers, a couple of diaries, broken pencils, stickers, a pet rock she bought from her classroom sale, snacks, sunglasses, winter gloves (still), f’ing glitter for no reason at all, a few hundred rainbow loom rubber bands, and quite possibly her homework would actually be in the bag too.
Happy end of the school year to all of you! Or as the country song would say, “Hey y’all whatever ya’ sippin’ get it up in the air. Bottoms up.”
-Pete
