Friday, September 04, 2009

2 years and 10 days

We made it through 2 years and 10 days of elementary school education without anyone needing to make a trip to the Principal's office. OK, technically, we made it 2 years, 9 days and ALMOST to the end of lunchtime.

That is right, boys and girls, AtHomeDaddy has spent the afternoon sitting in the Principal's office. My lovely little Princess was the culprit. Or at least an accomplice.

The hard lesson of the day is this: IF your friend decides to leave the cafeteria to go home for some more lunch, AND you are busily trying to keep that friend from going out of the front doors of the school because you know it is not a good idea, THEN do not follow your friend outside of the building and towards the parking lot. Seems pretty logical, no?

Heck it even seems to make sense to The Princess. Now.

It think it started making sense to the girl right about the time a parent found the kids standing on the sidewalk, beside the parking lot. Thankfully the mom took the girls directly to the office and everything was sorted out quickly. The adventurers were returned to their classes with an adult escort and the obligatory calls were made to the parents of the Wandering Duo.

I decided to visit the girl at school to hopefully make a strong impression about how dangerous her actions were. And after we walked around and chatted at length about making better choices to help friends and the impenetrable fortress that is the school's front doors, I think a decent impression was made. If not, then a 3 day weekend with some extra chores might serve as a decent reminder...


An Addendum:
I know I am making light of what could have turned out to be a much more serious problem. Thankfully it did not and we can laugh about it a little. I have been on the other side of this type of mess when a boy walked away from my recreation center and we had to involve search dogs and helicopters to find him. 3 hours later. Yeah, not fun.

Luckily nothing more serious occurred today. I am thanking God that the other parent was at the right place at the right time to see what was going on and to bring the girls back in to the school.

Besides all that though, I never thought we would go more than 2 years without The Talker making a trip to the Principal's office. After all, I was sent to Mr. Spurling's office on my FIRST day of Kindergarten. And I learned one thing way back then: It does not matter if the Principal is your dad's friend, he really will not like to answer to a Kindergartner who addresses him by his first name. "Hello, Terry" really did not work out too well for me way back then.

No comments: