School daze

When I was a kid, I read books about children who went to boarding school, and more than anything else I longed to get shipped off to some austere academy where people would force me to make my bed. Nobody ever suggested that my parents should help me follow my bliss, although I'm surely it was nothing more than a simple lack of funds that kept them from getting on board.

For the past year, Annabelle has been basting her brain with tales from American Girl magazine, which is heavily skewed in favor of a traditionally educated readership. I suppose a magazine geared toward vagabond children who follow their temporarily single mother around Europe wouldn't have a very large circulation, but think of the recipes and travel tips! When we arrived here in Kentucky, Annabelle began talking about possibly attending the local school so that she might find some friends and be able to make a cool flower magnet for her locker (an AG mag idea). This seemed to be a much more reasonable request than my longings for a convent school high in the Swiss alps, so I figured what the hell. We gave our local intermediate school a cursory examination and signed her up.

Then we started worrying that perhaps Mike would get bored and lonely without Annabelle for companionship, so we investigated our local middle school as well. I didn't have high hopes for the middle school, as they have a rather nitnoid dress code policy and Mike tends not to cope well with control-freaky stuff like that. While Mike didn't exactly leap at the opportunity to go to school, he was a little bit curious and willing to give it a try. And thus yesterday, the first day back after fall break, began our grand experiment, our re-entry into the world of formal education.

Mike was the first one home and frankly the one I had been wondering about the most throughout the day. He reported that the cafeteria food is unfit for human consumption and that his PE teacher reminds him of "Dick Cheney in a gymsuit." (Note to self: Keep this blog a secret from the Ft. Knox educational community!) He did, however, like his math teacher and said there really wasn't much homework. What little homework there was, he sat right down to do. That whooshing sound you heard at approximately 3 p.m. EST? That was me exhaling. Prematurely, as it turned out.

Annabelle slumped off her bus a half hour later looking very solemn indeed. By the time she reached the front door, she was sobbing her heart out. She says she is the slowest person in her class at everything and that she feels like a big dummy and is going to be totally STRESSED! And why, oh why, did she ever have this stupid idea of going to school anyway?! AND they have to take in a picture of their American hero. And Andrew Lloyd Webber? He's BRITISH! And TS Eliot? BRITISH!!! And WHY DON'T YOU TRY DOING 5 DIFFERENT TYPES OF MATH IN ONE PROBLEM AFTER TWO YEARS OF DOING NOTHING, MOM?!? (ouch)

Of course, if there's one thing you can count on in the Taylor household, it's that the emotional weather is guaranteed to change quickly and without warning and chances are you won't be dressed properly for it. By supper time, Annabelle had finished her homework and was regaining her original optimistic outlook. This was helped in no small part by my father, who informed us that TS Eliot was actually born in St. Louis and educated at Harvard. And thus, an American hero project was launched!

Meanwhile, the storm clouds had passed from Annabelle's head to Mike's. The further we got into the evening, the gloomier he became. He had spent the afternoon exploring the neighborhood with a couple of kids he met at school. One might think that this would be a GOOD thing, but not in Mikeville. No, he told us gloomily, this whole school thing flies directly in the face of his plan to make it through 2 years at Ft. Knox without making friends. After all, what is the point of making friends when you're just going to have to say goodbye?

This morning was a brilliant exercise in acid indigestion. Annabelle seemed happy enough, but Mike got on his bus with the enthusiasm one normally reserves for jury duty.

What will the day hold for them? Who knows? Not me, that's for sure. I shall spend the day nibbling my nails in anxious anticipation and trying to sort through some boxes. I wonder if it's too late to get me into a good boarding school in Switzerland . . .