Aiden and Madeleine love their principal. In fact the whole school loves her. She has earned the love through her crazy stunts to promote learning. The poor woman has been duck taped to a wall, hit with a pie, and eaten grasshoppers. I think the grasshoppers were covered in chocolate so it’s not that horrible. You might not think throwing a pie at someone would encourage children to perform well on math tests but…A pie in the face is really awesome.
School has been going well under the guidance of the principal. Life was cheery for all the lovely children. Until three weeks ago. Three weeks ago the bottom fell out. The fantastic principal had to have minor surgery which put her out until the 9th. Hopefully.
Cue grumpy old retired substitute principal. He has taken the place of the beloved principal. This sent the kids into a tizzy. An absolute frenzy of kid anger and kid resentment. Wild rumors are flying around about this man. Apparently he hates kids, makes everyone walk in straight lines, yells at you randomly, and even insists on silence in the lunch room. Gasp. I’m all like suck it up kids you didn’t have my mean first grade teacher. She was really something to fear.
Right before winter break Aiden was refusing to go to school. I questioned him as to why he didn’t want to go to school. This is a snippet of our conversation.
“Aiden, why don’t you want to go to school”?
“The principal is so mean. He told me to hurry up at my locker. Why would he do something like that”?
“Well because you can move very slowly, but you are still going to school”.
“You would send your son to a school where the principal hates kids”?
I could smell utter nonsense at that statement. But I pretended to look shocked.
“WHAT? He told the students that he hates kids. Oh my gosh. I have to call the school board about that. That’s not even legal to say that”.
As I was grabbing for my phone Aiden looked rather uncomfortable…
“Ah mom, I was hoping to keep this just between us”.
“But he hates kids Aiden. Who did he tell this to”?
“Um, one of the kids in before care. And those kids know stuff. They are at the school first”.
Right that clearly makes you know stuff. Being at the school first. Let’s just hope the principal returns before the kids know anymore “stuff”.
I blame the horses
Madeleine has recently developed a whole lot of courage. Or rather her really sassy attitude is coming out full force. After years of ignoring people when being asked questions, she has suddenly started answering people. I give a lot of credit to her riding instructor Marie. Marie doesn’t take any crap off the kids and doesn’t care if the kids are shy. They need to learn to ask questions and speak up during lessons. So yeah, I have been feeling proud of Madeleine’s new voice. Unfortunately, the talky version of Madeleine came to bite me in the ass. She had a dental appointment to have a cavity filled two weeks ago. I was nervous about how she was going to handle the filling so I gave the go ahead for her to get laughing gas. Yeah. Madeleine + laughing gas=family secrets. The dentist fitted
her with the “mask” for the laughing gas and then asked Madeleine what she did over her weekend. Her reply?
“My mom had a horse fart on her head”. Ah thanks Madeleine. Glad you are so chatty now. Madeleine didn’t even explain the whole story. She made it sound like I was just hanging out behind the horse. I promise I wasn’t. I was actually cleaning the hoof of the horse she was going to use for her lesson. I made sure to clear all that up quickly with the doctor. Really quickly.