That Woman Is A Non-Stop Party

Last night was curriculum night at Laura's school. On curriculum night, parents go to the classrooms and hear what's on the learning agenda for the year. I think it's a good chance to get oriented to the teacher and her expectations, AND a major, important chance to meet and scope out the other parents. You know, chit chat, say things like, "Laura loves sitting next to Kennedy/Cooper/Addison/Carlyle!" (those are all girls, by the way), discuss playdates, and check out each other's handbags. The uniform for this event, if you are a woman, consists of:

• cropped pants (everybody's wearing those cargo ones, the kind that never go near any actual cargo)
• a floaty, fluttery top OR a t-shirt, if it's pink or turquoise
• sandals
• a pedicure

I am always slightly out-of-uniform because I wear jeans most of the time, whereas my fellow matrons only wear jeans in winter. I have the other pieces, though, which keeps me from getting a demerit. Anyway.

So we were sitting at our children's desks for this event, which required getting ourselves little chairs from a stack. Jan My Former Co-Room Mom's daughter sits in the same group of desks as Laura, so when she entered the room ten minutes late, I waved excitedly and pointed out her daughter's desk to her. I was thrilled to see her, because she always says or does something a little startling. The teacher was already talking, and everyone was actively listening to the intricacies of the first-quarter rubric for mathematics standards. Jan threads her way through the chairs and arrives at her desk. When she realizes there is no chair there, she points to a dad sitting at the next desk and says, at full volume, "I'll just sit on his lap," and she does a half-bend of her knees, as though she is about to come in for a landing. Everyone erupts in titters, the dad leaps to his feet to offer her his chair, she refuses, saying she can get her own, he insists, his wife smiles blandly, and we all get completely distracted from the pressing need to buy multiplication flashcards.

Everyone was seated again and the teacher went on with her program, and everything was fine except that she said, "If it's a test they had did badly on" instead of "had done," and I was pondering how big a deal this was, this grammar slip-up. On the subject of linguistics, in general, I am a liberal, but not when it comes to teachers. For them, I tend toward a jackbooted, strict prescriptionist model. I wondered if maybe she had been going for the simpler, "A test they did badly on," and got caught up in her tenses.

While I was working this out, she came to the end of her remarks, and we were invited to take our child's composition journal out and read it. Then we each wrote a little note for our child to find. I was engrossed in these activities, and only became aware of Jan again when she asked the teacher, "Will N get in trouble because I messed up her desk?" Ms. H came over by her and said, "What do you mean?" Jan said, "I messed it up, I totally trashed it as a joke. I spilled her pencil box and messed up her papers." I couldn't see, but Ms. H glanced into the desk and actually looked horrified. She said, "Oh, don't do that to that child!" My fellow parents were watching this scene in bemusement and dismay. Because they don't know what I know:

The woman is kooky.

I think that is the technical term.

And that's all I have for you today.