Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Circle of Life


It's official. Summer is now over and my weekly schedule has returned to somewhat normal. This morning I dropped off Benjamin at his new school and headed back to an empty house. How nice.

So I have to tell you about another one of those moments of parental realization for me that happen last week.

I took Benjamin to school to meet his new teachers and talk with them about how he is as an active boy. For the most part it went well. He seemed like he would do fine when school started and he gave his teachers a warning shot of his active nature.

While Benjamin was busy playing with the new toys he found in his classroom the teacher asked me to fill out the emergency contact info and other last minute forms. I didn't think much about it and took the forms to one of the tables in the classroom and squatted into one of the miniature chairs to fill out the information. Then it hit me. Wait a minute. The teacher got me into a midget chair.

At this point my mother is laughing loudly while reading this entry. There is a story that she likes to tell about how I got her into a midget chair when I was in second grade.
Back in the day, I was known as the class clown. I know shocker. Well apparently I considered music class my chance to dazzle my classmates with my stand-up routines instead of learning my do, re, fa, so la, ti do.

So when it came time for parent/teacher conference day all of my teachers lined up for an inquisition of my mother. To this day she still talks about how when she walked into the room there were three big chairs and one midget chair. That's when she was hit with a barrage of attacks on how I wasn't taking the lessons seriously. She said she felt so belittled just by the simple fact that she had to sit in a midget and take the attack I caused.

Fast forward 27 years. As I was writing down my cell phone number a wave of memories hit me. And the feeling of being a parent settled in. I was now sitting in a midget chair in my son's classroom. Thankfully he hadn't been there long enough for me to endure what my mother endured with Mrs. Boone, Mrs. Gonzales and Mr. Campbell.

1 comment:

Marilyn said...

Yes - I laughed the whole time I read this entry. Your account of that event years ago is perfect, I guess I did a good job of telling the story over and over again. Trust me - your days of the midget chair have just begun! Benjamin has that Livingston personality - "class Clown".