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Your school picture day memories
As excited as we were about my son's first school picture day earlier this month, we weren't especially optimistic.
My son is a genius when it comes to a variety of things. To name a few: Lego construction, "Star Wars" trivia, pillow fort engineering, bed making (I know, weird ...), baby brother wrangling and bedtime hug distribution.
It was 1976. Everyone had a bowl cut.
But he's a disaster when it comes to taking posed pictures. When someone pulls out a camera, he starts acting like a mobster in witness location, covering his face or running out of the frame. When asked to smile, he either looks at his shoes, closes his eyes or gets this weird forced smirk that looks like he took a giant bite of a lime and chased it with a handful of Sweet Tarts.
I have no right to complain. He definitely got this trait from me. I've taken exactly one good posed photo in my lifetime, pictured on the right, which was captured during first grade at Washington Elementary School in Burlingame. (Go Wildcats!) Since then, my life has been a series of forced smiles, strained looks and frustrated conversations with loved ones who think I'm doing it on purpose. I hit a low point two years ago, when the Chronicle decided to feature my photo in an in-house advertisement promoting the newspaper. I was so tense and unphotograph-able that the excellent portrait photographer stuck with the job suggested I walk down the alley to the newsroom bar and take a couple of bourbon shots to loosen up.
Which makes the ending to my son's school picture day saga that much more shocking. His story is below. Your school photo memories in the comments ... Read More 'Your school picture day memories' »
| October 20 2010 at 11:40 AM
Fundraising revolt: Things I wish my kid's school would sell
We've been having a wonderful honeymoon period with my son's first few weeks of kindergarten. I'm guessing it's a lot like my wife felt when she first started going out with me. Even my annoying behavior was kind of endearing.
thesocietypages.org
It definitely beats wrapping paper.
I have absolutely no complaints about school so far. Mostly I'm amazed at the miracle of paid child care being replaced by an excellent free education. He comes home and knows lots of new stuff. He's occupied for almost five hours per day. And so much of the entire process is really, really adorable. His little backpack ... his excitement about eating in the cafeteria ... the way he hugs his 2-year-old brother goodbye every morning. Did I mention picture day is coming up?
But I do have one tiny gripe for the public school suggestion box: All the crap that the school wants our kids sell. While we had braced ourselves for endless fundraisers and are ready to give 'till it hurts, I was disappointed by the content of the catalogs that he brought home. They were filled with wrapping paper, chunky jewelry, a golf-themed mug that says "Who's Your Caddy" and other gifts seemingly inspired by SkyMall. I paged through two catalogs with an open mind and bulging wallet, and found absolutely nothing I wanted to buy for myself.
So with that in mind, I've compiled a list of things I wish my son's school would sell. I would be happy to pay double the market value for anything on this list.
Read More 'Fundraising revolt: Things I wish my kid's school would sell' »| September 29 2010 at 06:07 AM
First week of kindergarten: harder on the parents ...
As I mentioned in the what-makes-you-bawl post, my son Theo started kindergarten this week. We've known that my son would start kindergarten in fall 2010 pretty much since my wife confirmed she was pregnant -- and yet I was in complete denial until the night before, when I realized that I actually had to be on time in the morning.
Yes, I followed him around taking pictures ...
He didn't have to be on time in preschool or with his babysitter. If we were running late (or his little brother was throwing a fit, or if the "Eight is Enough" actors were reuniting on "Today" ...) we could cruise into preschool 40 minutes late, and feel like the cool people who are the last ones to arrive at the party. Children would yell "Theeeooo!" like he was Norm from "Cheers." Hell, we could have both showed up in our pajamas, and I doubt anyone would have cared. In preschool, everyone gets to act like they're Howard Hughes.
Not in kindergarten. They have bells and @#$% at his school. If we start a habit of lollygagging in the morning, my son will technically be a truant. I'm not sure if they send 5-year-olds to the "Breakfast Club" detention, but I don't want to take the chance. Because my son would definitely be the Anthony Michael Hall. And that's the worst guy you can be in Saturday all-day detention. At least Judd Nelson and Emilio Estevez got to hook up in the end. Meanwhile, Farmer Ted had to write that stupid essay ...
But I digress. Kindergarten. And denial. It didn't completely register that I have an elementary school-age son until he told me yesterday that he went to an assembly. I asked follow-up questions and tried to act interested, but mostly I was panicking, as reality set in even further. Oh my God. I have a son who is old enough to go to an assembly. I guess my dream of winning "American Idol" is probably over ...
Some more first week of kindergarten thoughts below. Yours in the comments.
Read More 'First week of kindergarten: harder on the parents ...' »| September 02 2010 at 06:04 AM
Kids and friend triangles
My best friend in kindergarten was Melanie. She was a quiet, shy girl like me, and I ate dinner regularly at her house even though I was a picky eater who horrified her mother by the fact that I would only eat rice with soy sauce. (Her dad did once coax me into trying a gnaw of a pickled pig's foot, of all things, which for a picky kid is like convincing someone with a fear of heights -- that's me too -- to parasail off the edge of the Grand Canyon. I still remember they were bristly.)
epguides.com
We played on the jungle gym together. We attempted a sleepover (I had my parents come get me but it was a noble effort.) We dressed up dolls and sat next to each other in class. Everything was great until Jennifer came along.
Jennifer had a loud raspy voice and a face sprinkled with freckles. She introduced a game called "Mommy and the bad babies." The bad babies would run away from mommy, taunting her with the fact that they were going to drink gin (I suspect Jennifer had an interesting home life). They would then climb to the top of the play structure and laugh, because mommy was too afraid of heights to scale the ladder. Mommy would stand at the foot of the ladder and hope the babies would come down soon.
I was mommy, and this was the first instance in friendships where I realized two is golden, and three is a bitter triangle. Because from here it slowly moved on until I was spending more and more time on the playground alone.
I don't know if the threesome with shifting loyalties and exclusion is more common to girls than boys or not, but it was a pattern I repeated a number of times in my friendships throughout my school years. I was one of those kids who always had a best friend, but when the circle expanded to two best friends, it worked about as well as replacing the lead singer in a band. In other words, it sucks. I've been on all sides -- most often the odd man out, but I've also been one of the two mean girls. The only solution I've ever seen work, to be honest, is for one of the three to find a new best friend and move on. Read More 'Kids and friend triangles' »
| August 25 2009 at 04:02 PM
Your school photo from hell
Peter's post on the worst item of clothing you owned reminded me that the point of having something so shameful in your closet was so you could wear it for school picture day. Because here's what I know about school pictures: I have never, ever taken even a halfway passable one, and if there was something shameful I was wearing or styling myself into at the time, it got memorialized in the worst possible light and my parents ordered ten wallet-sized shots of the whole debacle.
freshpics.blogspot.com
They even managed to make Jennifer Love Hewitt look like a dork.
I am not sure why school picture day is still around, why some go-getter kid hasn't just pointed out the madness of it all and staged a school-wide boycott. My photos from kindergarten through high school are all frighteningly awkward and hideous, but I also don't think I've ever seen a good school photo of anyone. My child had the misfortune to inherit my stiff picture face, and hers don't even look like her. It's like someone offered her five bucks to make the most unnatural smile of her life. The only point I can see to going through with school picture day is to desensitize yourself early for the inevitable wretched driver's license and passport photos.
The set-up, as I remember it, is terrible. You waited in line with your classmates in some awful outfit you chose yourself, which you would later regret. When it was almost your turn, an assistant would grab a comb and part your hair in a crazy way, or attempt to tame little flyaway's so that you ended up with either a static-riddled mop or something that looked like it had been pasted to your head. You then sat in a chair, assembly line-style, in front of a bad drape and stared into some really bright lights. Interrogation cells have more flattering light. Some guy with a big camera would tell you to say cheese or crack some horrible joke, and you'd force out a grin, trying not to crack under the pressure. Then you'd shuffle off, hoping the picture would be okay, but knowing deep down you had failed again. Read More 'Your school photo from hell' »
| July 22 2009 at 08:17 AM
Tales of horrible teachers
Every year I hold my breath until we find out who my kid's teacher will be. So far we've pretty much lucked out: All her teachers have been good, and this year we got one of the most beloved ones in the school, who totally won me over at Back-to-School Night with his distaste for homework. (Though yes, the kids still have to do it.) I imagine that at some point we will get a burned-out teacher or a drunk or someone who tries to teach intelligent design, but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.
movieprop.com
Actually a pretty good teacher, if you weren't on dope.
The teacher thing has always seemed profoundly important to me, not just from an educational, dear-god-let-her-learn-her-multiplication-tables-so-she-can-go-to-Harvard perspective, but also because my teachers were super important to me growing up. As a quiet, awkward, book-obsessed kid, I depended on the approval of my teachers to make up for my ineptness with my peers. The best years involved benign neglect from the majority of the kids around me, and a teacher who thought I was "bright" and "promising" and "a pleasure to have in class." Most elementary school years I had a good teacher -- i.e. a teacher who expressed above sentiments -- and more than one year I had awesome teachers who made me feel smart and good. Oh, and taught me things too.
But we've all had one teacher who was at least sort of crappy, right? See, when I thought of posting about teachers, for a minute I considered something on the influential, life-changing, stand-and-deliver kind of saviors who turned us around and got us all out of the gangs and into college or some sort of future. But that could get very touching, and I'm a little crabby and over-saturated with heartwarming-inspirational lately, what with the election and all. So even though teachers are the unsung heroes and many of them were little oases of kindness in my life, I thought we could dish on the less stellar ones. Read More 'Tales of horrible teachers' »
| September 11 2008 at 08:46 AM
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