Monday, April 26, 2010

Mother of the day.

Tonight I got a phone call from the little girl's pre-school teacher. I always get a pit in the bottom of my stomach when a teacher calls me. I almost instantaneously ask, "What did she do?" Benefit of the doubt? Not around here.

It turns out that instead of her doing something wrong, I missed our teacher conference today (awesome on my part) and so the teacher was doing a follow-up call to go over her report card. Do I have to remind you that the little girl is 2.5 years old? This pre-school business is apparently serious stuff!

Within the conversation, the teacher described a child that I am not very familiar with (she used adjectives such as friendly, cooperative, helpful, polite...I said, "do you mean smart-assed, flippant, demanding, and devious?). She talked about different activities that our little girl enjoys, skills she has developed and things she should work on over the summer. Seriously, I kid you not, in her bag were worksheets to practice cutting over the summer!

At the end of the conversation, the climax, the highlight, the grand-finale the teacher referenced a self-portrait that the little lady completed. In no less than 20 minutes, she painstakingly described the process that took place to create this self-portrait. I really don't know who was prouder of the work, the girl or the teacher. And after hearing that the teacher had taken the time to frame this self-portrait because she knew I would want to display it I paused. And praying that the coffee grounds weren't on top of the portrait I dug it out of the trashcan and took a look.

So if you think you are going to win Mother of the Day today. Try again, I've got you beat!