Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Back to School Again

I cannot express to you how happy I am today. There are not good enough words in the English language to describe it. Did I win the lottery multi-million dollar jackpot, you ask? No, I’m happier than that.

The boys went back to school yesterday. For the stay-at-home dad, that’s like heroin.

I am back to having a full six hours per day without kids. I am about to be the most productive human ever to have lived. Do you know why Thomas Edison was such a prolific inventor and had over one thousand patents? Because there were no kids in his workshop.

We had a whirlwind summer full of travel and goofing off, and we were actually at our own house for only about twenty minutes since school got out in June. We had a good time, and for the most part the kids were self-entertaining everywhere we went. Then it all fell apart when we came home and my wife selfishly went back to work two weeks ago.

There I was. In our unfamiliar home with three boys looking expectantly at me, asking me questions like, “Where are we going now?” and “Which one is our room again?” and “Are you sure this is our house?”

“Yes, this is our house. Now go play, I have work to do in my office.”

“We’re bored. There’s nothing to do here.”

“We have almost all the Legos in North America in our game room. Go build something.”

“Oh, yeah, we forgot about the game room!”

And so began the most impressive two-week Lego building extravaganza the world has ever seen. Morning to night, the three little elves were in their workshop, creating everything imaginable. Everything imaginable, that is, by my nine, eight, and six-year-old, which seems to consist mostly of castles, spaceships, and dragons. They built and built until there was an intergalactic feudal space kingdom plagued by a nasty dragon problem that covered every flat surface in a room the size of a three-car garage. 

There were epic battles, too. Not between Lego figures and monsters, mind you, but between my three sons. We have approximately two hundred little Lego men, but everyone only wanted the one guy. We have approximately nine hundred pounds of Lego bricks, but everyone only wanted the one piece.

I tried to get work done, but at the end of the two weeks, I had written about three and a half sentences, and two and a half of them were crap. I had also broken up at least two hundred fights and refereed two thousand arguments. Is nine thirty in the morning too early to start drinking? Not in the final two weeks of summer!

After much wailing, gnashing of teeth, and several trips to “Daddy’s aisle” at the grocery store, Meet the Teacher Day finally arrived on Monday. I dragged each boy to his respective classroom and apologized in advance for the entire school year, begging the teachers to let them stay no matter what might happen.

“I just need them out of the house,” I told their teachers, with wild desperation in my eyes.

“We know,” they said, with the gray-white pallor of impending doom showing on their faces. “We know.”

As I was doing the happy dance at the school drop-off yesterday, I found that, strangely, many of the moms had a different take on a childless house than I do. While some of them shared my elation, a lot of the ladies were outwardly sad that they would be going home to an empty house. Since I had no possible way of understanding that emotion, I was not able to comfort them in any way. I was only able to shout, “WoooooHoooo,” and I don’t think that helped. Sadness about sending the kids off to school is strictly an emotion of the female gender. At the prospect of time without children, ALL dads will jump for joy. No exceptions. “I love you kids, but get out. Come back for dinner.”

After the kids had all gone to class and I had finished my happy dance, I made my way to the school’s front office. I went in to question them as to why the elementary school day is only six hours, and what we could do to bump it up to eight or ten.

They didn’t seem willing to work with me on that. They just asked me if I thought eight o’clock in the morning was too early for them to start drinking.

See you soon,

-Smidge


Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen


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3 comments:

  1. Congrats on your sobriety for the next 9 months! My 27 yo finally left for college Sunday, and, wouldn't you know it (me being female and all) there was a moment when I almost wept. I'm swearing it was for joy, though! Have fun being productive :)

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  2. What is it with you females and all the constantly conflicting emotions? Embrace the awesome! And might I just correct you a tad on the sobriety thing... Just because I don't have to start drinking at 9:30 A.M. doesn't mean I won't... Celebration drinking is more fun anyway! Cheers!

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  3. I'll have a drink to that! Cheers to you, too :)

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