Today was kindergarten registration.
Adam is going to kindergarten next year,
so as his adoptive mom, I had to
go to the local elementary school
and do the mommy thing with
the two thousand forms
that have to be completed
before a child exists in the eyes
of the public school system.
I have done this many times before
(the first time being over 18 years ago)
so I made all the necessary preparations
and filled my purse with bic stiks and
white out. Then I got in my van
and drove the two blocks to the school
while my purse sat on the kitchen table,
jealously guarding its contents.
I was directed by a smiling child who could not
have been more than 15, but wore the
"I am a teacher at this school" ID clipped
to her lapel (funny, they get younger
every year) to a classroom that was filled with
miniature tables and miniature chairs
and more children posing as parents
sitting in the miniature chairs
busily writing on the two thousand
forms that were stacked
in neat little piles in front of them.
Behind the only normal size table
in the room sat another child posing
as a teacher, who smiled at me
and said, "Oh, are you here to register
your grandchild?"
I said,
"No..I'm here to register my child."
This announcement brought
quizzical glances from many of the
parent-children, and a blank stare
from the teacher-child who momentarily
recovered enough to hand me
a packet containing the two thousand
blank forms that I had to fill out.
I looked around for a normal sized chair
but had to settle for one of the tiny ones
and I determindly walked over too it
and began the descent of my
rear toward the seat which rested about
ten inches off the floor and I did not
recall those chairs ever having been
so low when my other children
started kindergarten. After about four minutes
of descending, my posterier finally
connected with plastic, and, with my knees
poking up at odd angles above the miniature table,
I was finally ready to begin the task
of writing the same information
over and over again
on each of the two thousand forms
in front of me. Then the horrible
realization that I was pen-less
struck, and I began to struggle
to get my knees in a position
which would allow me to lever myself
off the seat of that ten inch tall chair
so I could get a pen from the
normal sized table I had just left.
I watched in amazement as
one of the parent-children popped
up off her little chair with the grace
of a swallow in flight and I wondered
if maybe she had developed a formula
for anti-gravity pills and just not yet
divulged it to the masses.
After several false starts,
I managed to hoist myself
into the air and get a pen
from the cup on the teacher-child's
table. I then repeated the lowering
of my rear and got my knees positioned
one on either side of an ear, and began
the task of filling out those two thousand
forms. I looked at the first form and
thought to myself, "Damn school board
can't even make clear copies..this sucker
is unreadable." Then it occurred to me
that my reading glasses were safe and
sound, laying along side the pens
in my purse on the kitchen table
at my house, and while all the
parent-children were whizzing
through page after page of the
two thousand forms, I was carefully
extending and retracting my arms,
getting each paper in just the right
spot to read each question,
then putting it down on the miniature
table, and making awkward stabs
at gettting my scribble somewhere
in the general vicinity of the blanks
provided for the answers.
One by one, the parent-children
finished the task and popped out
of their chairs ( damn, that first one
must have handed out anti-gravity pills
before I got there) to turn in their completed
packets to the teacher-child who then
reviewed each packet, checking
for mistakes. I guess they all got
"A"'s because they were allowed
to leave without having to correct
anything. Finally, after developing
a massive headache, which I attributed
to an allergy to the questions
"Child's name, Child's birthdate,
Parents' names, Address" which
appeared on each of the two thousand forms,
I figured I was done, and hoisted myself
out of the miniature chair once more
to turn in my packet to the teacher-child
who had been, for the last ten minutes,
tapping her pen against her teeth, creating
a most irritating sound which echoed
into the now empty room.
Her relief was audible
as she took the packet from my hand
and smiled that ooey, gooey kindergarten
teacher-child smile, but I didn’t smile back
because I was still involved in the process
of getting my knees and back to straighten
into their original position and decided it was
just too damned much effort to bend the
muscles of my face from their grimace position
to their smile position.
Then she began checking over the forms
I had just handed her.
"Umm..I'm sorry, but what is this word?"
and she placed the tip
of her pen on an area of the answer section
of one of the pages.
I looked at it dutifully, then replied,
"I have no idea, but I am sure the same
word is on the previous page somewhere.
Just look there." My answer seemed to
wipe over her face somehow and the
ooey, gooey kindergarten teacher-child smile
disappeared. She flipped to the previous page
and then back, and wrote something with
her tooth tapping pen. It seemed she could
decipher the rest of the pages and then she
came to the "racial/ethnicity" page.
"Umm, I'm sorry (seems she was sorry a lot)
but there is a mistake on this page. You marked
your child's race as black."
"He is black." I replied.
She blinked.
"Is your husband his father?" she asked.
"Yes."
"You made a mistake on your husband's race, then."
she announced confidently. "You marked him as white."
"He is white." I replied.
She blinked, and hesitated, and blinked again..
"And you are Adam's mother?"
"Yes." I replied.
"But.....but..."
and she looked at me with that
"You really need to explain this to me
because I know something isn't right here" look.
I picked a pen out of the cup on her desk
and tapped it against my teeth
and looked back at her, fully
expecting her to grab a red pencil and mark a
big X on the page and assign me recess detention,
but she didn't.
After a second or two of heavy breathing, she
dropped her eyes back to the paper,
flipped to the last of the two thousand forms
and said,
"Okay, I think we have all we need.."
I dropped the pen back on her teacher table,
and as I headed for the door, I couldn't help thinking,
"No, I don't think you do have all you need. A brain
would be nice," ....
....but I politely refrained from saying it
out loud......

phantom...(c) WLA 3-21-2001