Unsatisfactory interactions

A meandering, dullish post in four parts.


1. I get my kid to school. There's no sign-in sheet. The sign-in sheet is where I list an emergency number where I can be contacted, so I kind of don't want to dump my kid off without it. I don't get called very often, but when I do, it's not for anything good. The sign-in sheet is also how the school keeps track of attendance for funding purposes, never mind the fact that such funding is drying up.

Now, the school's main administrator is there, subbing for the regular teacher. Does she seem to care about the lack of a sign-in sheet? No. She's flitting around the kiddie gym doing something. Adjusting the thermostat, maybe. Minutely adjusting rolls of masking tape. The other parents each say "Oh, there's no sign-in sheet," then start gossiping.

Finally I ask the administrator for the key to the classroom. Perhaps I could go look for the sign-in sheet? Okay. Let's do that thing.

Within two minutes, I have the sign-in sheet in my hand. The other parents then start grabbing it away from me, complaining that they need to hurry up, sign it, and get to work. Gosh, I guess maybe they wanted it after all. So, um, why not do something about it instead of standing around gossiping?


2. During the sign-in sheet muddle, another mother asks me what my kid will be doing in September. Now, I'm not kindly disposed toward her anyhow, because she has a tendency to ask nosy questions and put people on the spot. Once I watched her point out to another mother the fact that her kid had had most of his front teeth knocked out. "Yes, we noticed that," the lady said, with what I thought was great forbearance.

However, in this case I genuinely don't understand what she's asking, and it knocks me for a loop. What is any kid doing in September, other than going to school and hating life? I doubt she wants to hear a list of his hobbies.

"Um," I reply, "Sitting in a circle with other children and hopefully not picking his nose."

"Oh, that's right," she continues, "He's going to ____."

That's what she wanted to know. Which school my son was going to attend. Why didn't she just ask that? Or perhaps she did, in some oblique fashion, and I'm just too literal.



3. After I get the sign-in sheet, I pause to admire another mother's shirt. It shows a bunch of animals stacked on top of each other. At the top there's a primate, reaching for a little twinkly star. A cute design. "It's about reaching for the stars," the wearer says.

"Oooooh," sighs a third mother, "I'd loooove to have a star!"

By now, I'm a tad irritable and not as kind or polite as I should be. Snarky, even. "Really? A giant hot pulsing mass of plasma?" I respond, "What would you do with it?"

"Alllll SORTS of things!" she says, dreamily.

"I don't think I'd care to mess with stars," I say. I mime reaching for one. "Aiiii!!! It burnt off my hands!" I wave my imaginary smoking stumps in front of my face.

"Oh, you're clearly from the hard science end of things, not the liberal arts," she says, "not an artist." She continues in this vein at some length, which annoys the crap out of me.

"Actually," I respond, "I just prefer to not ignore reality."

Why must people assume there's a dichotomy between facts and beauty, reality and imagination? Why not possess and appreciate both?



4. On the way out of the school to my car, I pause to take some deep breaths. There's a little patter of droplets. Is it from rain falling onto the tree above me, or water falling from the tree onto the pavement? How might I tell from the sound? Look how lovely the light is, with the leaves becoming semi-transparent and making dappled layers.

"Fascinating," I muse out loud.

My son's main teacher comes around the corner and hears me. Her eyebrows raise, requesting an explanation. She then rushes away in one of those instances of not-connection. As in, not only has one failed to connect with another human being, but one has maybe creeped them out and they can't wait to get the hell away.

When I tell my husband about this later, he suggests that perhaps it had nothing to do with me. He thinks the teacher exists in a state of chemically-assisted levitation, aka antidepressants, because of the extreme stress she's under.

It's true. Not everything is about me. Most things aren't. The thing is, when one has so many unsatisfactory interactions with other people, at some point one probably should suspect that at least a little bit of it is.

Only six more weeks or so of school. Then I can try to figure out how to get my son the social interactions he so desperately craves while trying to avoid them myself.