A few weeks ago I got an email about Parent’s Night at Scarlette’s preschool. I gave J the date to clear his calendar and then got Scarlette all hyped up about meeting her new teacher for Pre-K.
We walked up to the school, swinging her between us and casually chatting about how fun it was going to be to see her new classroom when J said “Um, Honey? I don’t see any other kids here. In fact, we’re the only people here who have a kid with us.”
I frantically scanned the room to discover that this was totally true and I was completely confused.
What happened in my head then went something like this:
- Wait, what? Why are we the only people with a kid?
- Where are all the kids? They can’t meet their teachers if they aren’t here. Someone think of the children!
- Something has gone terribly awry.
- I am likely to blame for this.
- How did all these people know not to bring their kids with them? Is this some sort of special knowledge gene that gets turned on when you are a parent and somehow I missed it? I didn’t know you could have contractions without feeling them either. I seriously need to re-read my parenting books.
- How did all these people get babysitters for a Wednesday night?
- Why do we even need a kid-free parent’s night? It’s Pre-K. The kids are going to learn how to write their name and share toys. I could have told myself that. I mean, let’s just be honest about this. I am not the problem here. Parent’s Night is the problem here.
Then I said all those things out loud to J while bemoaning the fact that I did not even understand what had happened and he said “Well, I guess it is called PARENT’S night.”
And I was like “J. If they didn’t want me to bring the child THAT MADE ME A PARENT then they should have called it Parent’s ONLY Night. That is just solid logic right there, you’ll never convince me otherwise.”
So J took Scarlette to the playground while I sat in a tiny chair and learned that the next night was open house for the kids to meet the teacher and that also school started the following Monday. I was unprepared for all of this, having never received any information other than that about Parent’s Night and since I am a person who likes to verbally process information I blurted out “WHAT?! SCHOOL STARTS ON MONDAY?!”
And then everyone eyed me a bit warily, being the person who brought their child to Parent’s Night and also had no idea school started in four days and all.
I make an excellent first impression is what I’m saying.
I was incredibly confused as to how everyone else seemed to know what was going on. It was just like that time in 1996 when I showed up to the fist day of seventh grade to discover that all the girls were wearing chunky high-heeled white tennis shoes.
And I was wearing Converse.
(Okay, knock-off Converse.)
And I was like “I DON’T UNDERSTAND. IS THERE SOME SORT OF SEVENTH GRADE GIRL NEWSLETTER THAT I MISSED? I TOTALLY READ SEVENTEEN MAGAZINE. AND ALSO YM. CONVERSE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE THING THIS YEAR. I SAW NOTHING ABOUT CHUNKY HEELED WHITE SHOES ANYWHERE. AND NO ONE HAS EVEN TRIED TO KISS MY BY MY LOCKER YET EITHER. YOU HAVE FAILED ME, MAGAZINE OF MY YOUTH.
I could tell that even J thought that I had just gotten a bit mixed up and so once we were home I marched straight to my computer and dug through my inbox to prove to him that no one had ever sent me any information about all of the preschool things. Eventually I found one other email that said things like when open house was and when school started and also “please don’t bring your kid to Parent’s Night.”
It was in my spam folder because the universe has been conspiring against me since middle school.
So this week when I got the email about the Parent’s Night Meeting for the soccer team that we just signed Scarlette up for, I. WAS. READY.
I gathered up my day planner, my color coded ball point pens and the printed out email with directions to said parent meeting and I was like
I was going to rock that Parent’s Night Meeting like a boss.
No one was going to think that I didn’t know how to handle myself at a Parent’s Night Meeting.
Yeah.
I was the only person at the Parent’s Night Meeting that did NOT have their child with them.
HOW IS THERE NOT SOME SORT OF UNIVERSAL DEFINITION OF PARENT’S NIGHT, Y’ALL?
