Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Done

Yesterday was Master J's last day at his current school. Five minutes after I got home from dropping him off, the phone rang. When I saw the school's number, my heart sank and I debated whether to even pick it up. I did, and it was Master J calling to tell me he had forgotten his library book on his bed and asking me if I could bring it in for him. Whew! I assured him I would when I brought in the treats he wanted to share. So I got back in my car and headed over to the local grocer to find some cookies for the 48 (they've added a few) children in the "double den" of chaos that is (was) my son's classroom. It took me several confused minutes to locate the baked goods under the big "Bakery" sign. One of the bakers finally felt sorry enough for me to come out and offer assistance. Five feet from where I was standing, in the middle of an open area, was a large table that was heaped with boxes of cookies. Large, bright signs declared "COOKIES" in bold letters. They really shouldn't hide it like that if they expect people to find it. Anyway, five boxes of cookies later and I headed over to the school to drop of the booty and the library book. When I walk in to the classroom, all the children are sitting on the floor listening to the student teacher read a book. All the children except mine that is. My son was sitting at a table, doing a Sudoku puzzle. My tax dollars, hard at work. He saw me, thanked me for bringing his library book and the cookies and went back to work on his puzzle. His teacher came over to take the cookies and thank me for all my time spent volunteering and wish me luck in our new location. I headed back home to finish some more packing. At the end of the day, Master J got in my car very excited because he'd only been to the safe seat twice and everyone had hugged him before he left. They gave him a really cute card that all the kids had signed and both his teacher and the student teacher wrote really nice notes about how great he was. Several of the girls had even given him their phone numbers and addresses so he could stay in contact with them. Even the boy that had bullied him wanted a hug before he left. I'm so proud of my son for being able to do that without "accidentally" kneeing that boy in the groin or something. He's a better man than I. All in all, a good end to his school career in the land of no opportunity. Here's hoping that 20 years from now, when his name is synonymous with all that is good and right with being a billionaire, some of the people that wanted to put him in special education for talking out of turn will finally see the error of their ways. Here's hoping he has more class than his mother and doesn't even consider using his success as a weapon to shame them with.

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