The Office

In the course of the last few weeks of summer, I began to notice something disturbing. I was still getting letters from our elementary school about the upcoming school year. I thought I had taken care of having the boys' records removed, and there was a chance that these were just generic local mailings to everybody in the neighborhood, but I wanted to be sure.

This past Monday I plucked up my courage (did I mention the nightmares yet? No, I see I haven’t. I’ll get back to those later) and went over to the school. Walked into the office and announced my reason for being there, trying as hard as I could to look neither confrontational nor apologetic. I’ve volunteered at that school a LOT over the past two years, so I’m a pretty familiar face in the office, if not a familiar name. “Oh sure, come with me and we’ll go check to make sure,” said Office Lady, without any hints of surprise or dismay. Encouraging! So we went over to her desk and she had me repeat to her coworker (Office Lady 2) that I was there to make sure my boys were off their records because I’m going to homeschool them.

“Oh no, don’t do THAT!”

That wasn’t OL2. That was a voice from an adjoining office. And though the occupant of the office is not familiar to me, the voice was, so I looked up, and there was Joseph’s kindergarten teacher.

She’s probably the one person I spent the most time with as a volunteer. Well, it’s between her and the librarian. Anyway, we’ve been very chummy. I was surprised to hear her be that adamant – she knows me, and knows that I’m not a Slacker Mom or anything like that – and I think she was pretty surprised, too. She immediately apologized and declared it to be none of her business, and let me finish what I was there for.  But before I left, she expressed her hope that we would be back next year. “Well, we’ll see,” was all I could think of to say.

Getting the kids’ names off the school records (because there they indeed were) was a piece of cake. I was there a total of three minutes, tops. But I don’t think I’ll ever get that voice out of my head. Not that it discouraged me at all. No, it was just the first real voice of dissent I’ve heard so far, and that’ll probably stick with me.

Well, we’ll see.