Mornings

I care deeply about my children's education, and I devote a great deal of time to nurturing it.

This time usually begins half an hour before we depart for school in the morning, when I open their backpacks to prepare their lunches and find the Important School Documents that require our Immediate Attention for several parental hours. And by Immediate Attention, I usually mean a cheque. And Several Hours usually means time you should have devoted to your offspring last night when instead you let the kids outside to horse around somewhere and you and your wife were inside vegging out watching some idiotic dancing program on TV. This will ultimately result in your children becoming Illiterate Cretins, according to the Important Documents You Should Have Read Last Night.

Seeing these Important Documents in the morning usually sends me into paroxysms of hyper activity, as if getting lunches prepared and kids dressed and off the darn computer and stop beating up your sister and get dressed I'm not telling you again aren't frantic enough.

Often, the Important Documents mean signing up to volunteer several dozen hours per week in some helpful capacity at the school, such as Hot Lunch Coordinator, or envelope stuffer, or Person Dreaming Up The Next Big Fundraising Idea for Next Week and Every Week Thereafter Until The End Of Time To Pester You For Money I'm Getting Sick Of Selling Magazines and Cookie Dough Where Are My Medications!?!.

Two weeks since school started.

I'm not sure I'm going to make it. Please send money. Or just sign these forms here and here and here and put them in the backpacks over there.

Thanks a lot.