I used to be cool. As a fun young adult my first car I purchased on my own was a darling little red vw beetle. Super cute! It's horn even had a sweet little -beep-, not too threatening when endargered by someone in the wrong land. Never the less, cute car. Our next vehicle was a little less cool. Once pregnant, we purchased the standard losermobile, the wagon. Now, when we came to the realization 3 car seats do not fit in a mitsubishi sportsback lancer, we opted for what every mother and father put off as long as possible, the minivan. I had flashbacks to a 1990 white chrysler our family trecked around in for years, and it was fairly traumatizing just thinking of it. My sister Tessa puked in it the first time we took a ride in it and the smell just never really improved from there. My dad refered to it as the feedafrimobile, because at any given time, one could gather the random lost food items from under the seats and feed most of Africa. Which between the stray french fries, occassional half-filled bottle and God knows what else, this probably held some truth. And, the memories of slamming of little fingers in those sliding doors, chilling! So, in deciding to purchase our van, I swore, our van would be kept clean, our van would stay nice, but most importantly, our van would not smell like a minivan. And low and behold, on the way to preschool today, I was overwhelmed by a stench. I am not too sure where the minivan went this weekend, as I was at work all weekend. I know it transported a dog to and from the dog park, and I know more than a meal or two were probably consumed inside of the van...but what on earth was this horrible aroma. I glanced under and around my seat before backing out but we of course were running late so this would have to wait. I grab Bud's backpack while we sitting at a light and rumage around in it finding a note addressed to Mrs. F, me. Hmmm... this can't be good. I pretty much detest preschool and the preschool teacher and I feel like I need to bring you up to speed.
So a little history here, Tuesday and Thursday mornings, Buddy attends 3 year old preschool. I, thinking I was a really good mommy, signed him up in the fall for 3 year old preschool. Buddy is my smarter than I know what to do with kid. I felt fairly confident since the child could identify all his alphabet by 18 months, every geometric shape by the age of 2 and a held a passion for identifying every road sign out there (even an assortment of road signs from The island of Guam provided by my sister), that 3 year old preschool would probably be a mental breeze for Budman. I thought that since I had never left Buddy with a stranger, he had never gone to daycare, and he is somewhat socially inept, it was imperative he check out the inside of a class room. Happily, we enrolled our kiddo in the 3 year old am class after filling out more paperwork than it takes to adopt a child from China. We finished every page that requested his likes, dislikes, family life, and of course his name. First day of school we show up as a family and everything of Buddy's is labeled with the name "John." His desk says "John," his homework says "John" his backpack says "John." Now Buddy WAS named after Kevin's grandfather John Joseph, but has always gone by "Bud". However, on the mound of paperwork we turned in, I had scrawled the name Buddy in every single place I could except for legal name. I made it clear, our kid's name is Buddy, he prefers Buddy, call him Buddy. So in a sweet unassuming, passive-aggressive way, I brought this to the teacher's attention. "He doesn't know his name is John he gies by Buddy," I smiled sweetly. "Well, it's already written on everything." the teacher responded coarsely. Lady, who are you? Shouldn't preschool teachers be happy and smiley and lovey and goey? It killed me to leave our little with tears running down his cheeks at a strange place, but please, call him by the right name! Every day I would ask if they were calling him Buddy yet, the teachers would report that our child now went by John and was correcting other children who called him Bud. Are you freaking kidding? We continued the name calling battle all of first semester and finally my hubby laid the smack down with Mrs. J the last day before winter break. I don't know what sort of stops he pulled out but he got a lot further than I ever did with the heartless woman. This semester he is again "Buddy" but this semester drama is that Buddy is a scribbler. He is 4 years old, he does not stay inside his lines when coloring, he scribbles. Soooo? The teacher told him he scribbles in front of the class. Last week he came got in the car and burst into tears when I asked him about his day. "What's the matter guy?" I asked. "Sarah Lynn told me I'm baby because I scribble and none of my friends will play with me!!" Seriously? My sweet little guy is getting pushed around by the coloring Nazis of 3 year old preschool? Now, I didn't go to preschool because I am the oldest and basically "test kid" who my parents tried out everything on, but I was under the impression that preschool was supposed to be a good time. Finger painting, show and tell, happy puppy butterfly stuff, I don't know, Preschool is supposedly fun, am I right? Poor little Budman. We worked diligently on his coloring skills and I think he does an ok job, I like his color choices and I think he might just be an abstract artist. So anyway, as I'm headed down our street I today I find a little note in his book bag which read "Mrs Fallon, please call us, we would like to discuss Buddy's work ethic." Work ethic. Yup, my 4 year old's work ethic is subpar. Don't know what to say to this old hag at our approaching meeting, My kid is bored outta his mind in your class, you called him by the wrong name for 5 months against our wishes and now you've got the class calling him the scribbling baby. This lady is not warm and fuzzy, she's just mean. What to do? As my mind skips from one thought to the next, I start to come back to my little minivan world that I'm driving in and what he'll is that smell? My preschooler has no work ethic and I am driving in a vehicle that smells like the petting zoo....where did I go wrong? At least we made it to preschool by 7:58!
Are you kidding me???? I bet when you slash their tires they won't question YOUR work ethic....
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