In a week, my daughter starts school for the first time (can you hear me bawling through your screen?). I’m sure there’s a small part of her that’s somewhat excited, but at this point, I think it’s safe to say that it’s dwarfed by sheer terror, which I completely, absolutely, unequivocally, totally 100% understand because, hey, that’s me every. waking. moment. these. days.
Just like everywhere else, our school gave us the opportunity to come to our new classroom last week to check things out. Due to COVID, we were (understandably) limited to a 15-min timeslot, which basically gave us the chance to meet our teacher, exchange a few pleasantries, find our name tag and cubby hole, and move on.
I share all of this just to emphasize the fact that we did not have much time in the classroom. In an attempt to prep her for what was coming, my husband and I sat our daughter down the other night and started running through what we thought the day would look like.
We could both see that after about 10 words, our daughter’s eyes were glazing over and she was no longer paying attention. And yet, we persisted, blindly believing that maybe, just maybe, if we spoke emphatically enough, we would instill in her some spark of excitement or joy at the day to come.
This didn’t happen. B just stared at the wall, then at her toys on the floor, then at the sofa, before finally resting on a speck of dust she had found a few feet away from her. There was almost no hope of getting her back, until my husband randomly threw out a, “and you’ll get to use the little toilet….”
It was like a light switch had been flipped. The comatose robot that had been sitting in front of us instantly perked up, sat at attention and said, “There is a…. little…. TOILET??? For ME???”
Milking this moment for all it was worth, my husband and I both fed into her glee, going into great detail about how “fun” it was going to be to flush a toilet bowl at her own level.
She was sold. From that moment on, everything focused on this ridiculous toilet bowl. She sat her stuffed animal friends in a circle and explained the inner workings of a toilet bowl to them. She crafted her own song about how great school would be because it had a mini toilet bowl. She ate dinner really well, telling us all that she had to eat as much as possible so she could make her trip to the toilet bowl worthwhile.
It was starting to get ugly, so we were fortunate that this event was happening in less than 24 hours or who knows what level of vulgarity we would have gotten into by now.
Fast-forward to the Big Day. We dutifully took our temperatures, dressed and brushed teeth, and headed out. Upon arrival, we were escorted into our new classroom. Our new teacher was at the door, waiting to welcome us to the new year.
So basically, yeah. I guess you could say that our school year may be going down the toilet quickly.