Orientation Observations

Little drama to deal with.

Mrs S and the Eldest, while on there way west for the college send off broke down in Bozeman MT. Unexpected 24 hour and 2G delay while the Audi was repaired. *sigh* Lots of rejiggering scheduled and flights home, meant that Mrs S would not be home Wednesday night, new date and time; Thursday late.

High school orientation here I come. First time I’ve ever been to an orientation for any school. that’s really Mrs S’s prevue. I wouldn’t ask the right questions, and frankly my ADD patience quotient is about 11 minutes for any one activity, and this one was planned for 2 hours.

Oy.

So off we went. High School. Except for the theatre and the athletic venues I’ve never been to the local high school. One of the those buildings I’ve passed every day for 17 years but had no occasion to go in.

Now I do.

Orientation. One hour in the theatre listening to the Principal, the Assistant Principal, the Assistant to the Assistant Principal, the Principal Assistant to the Principals Assistant and the School Nurse. Interestingly enough, or not, they all had the same message, do your best and get involved. Except the Principal who also had about 20 minutes of content on how great a school we have here in Apple Valley. Awards in athletics, academics, and arts, clubs to cover every interesting including surprisingly, trap shooting.

Sounds like our local high school has quite the program. Of course we were second to Rosemount in enough things that I did start wondering about the possibility of open enrolling at over there, it’s only 15 minutes away.

There were more than a few kids there with both parents, in by cynical jaded view “must be their first kid”. Sad eh? My daughter was embarrassed by my mere presence and I was  constantly coached about how to behave, like “don’t arrive in the theatre more than a nanosecond early, say three steps behind me, and no touchie. Figgas. Actually Dad, would be best if you pretended you didn’t know me.”

I actually don’t know per se, when asked by another parent I hadn’t seen in while about her I replied she was 14 years old.  My math was wrong. Parents should know better but doing the math from her Bat Mitzvah last year and I came up with 14. Forget that she was two weeks short of 14 at that event and is now 15. Oh well.

The actual ‘listening’ part of the presentaion began speech by one of the activities directors at the school, 3 minutes of content sandwiched around 15 minutes of useless examples of abot points that I didn’t really have shred of relevance to anything relative to the first day of high school. Life lessons? Sure, but in the same way that elderly neighbor offers up advice after her third sherry. Interesting but lacking that certain relevance I like.

I wrote a line of “Z’s” on the program and showed it my daughter. “Great example Dad”. I roll like that sometimes.

“No idea what he’s talking about”. More bad leading.

Next stop, the locker. “Lemmie see you open your locker.”

Clockwise to the First number.
Round the world the other way to the second number.
Clockwise again, straight to the third number.
And then back to zero.

“Whoa.. whoa whoa dude” She looked up at me in HORROR. I broke one of the cool rules, I had questioned the kid. “Stop it DAAAAD”. “Dude, there’s no back to zero” “I know whAT I’M DOOOOOIIIINGGGG”. She can’t get the thing opened. Lean in, hands behind my back, whisper into the back of her head “no zero, don’ go back to zero”.. which she did and which worked. Imagine that, old dad sporting a clue.

Along the way one of her pals came over and the talked about how cool their lockers were. Purple. Big enough to get into kinda, “Don’t be jumping in there now” I said “the Seniors will be stuffing you in there soon enough.” “Daaaad they don’t do that.” OK that’s what they told me exactly 36 years ago when I was a freshmen.

Teacher meet and greet was up next. They’re nice. I met the science teacher who inspired Nate to pursue a career in Geology. He was happy to hear that he had an impact, “so many leave here and do nothing with their lives”. Whoa there Mr. Science your infectious enthusiasm is showing.  Moving on. Now many of the kids teachers, well, looked to me like they were just about a year out of high school themselves. Inmates running the asylum.

You could tell the parents though, just look for the folks sporting the tattoos. Jaysus H. Christ himself peeps. Ladies, ya absotulty HAD to get ink on that sun-damaged old leather you call skin. And then you thought spagehetti straps were the right think to wear to your kids school? I don’t want to see 3/4 of a rose peeking up over your 36 longs.  No good. And you Dad’s my age, with the barbwire bicep and f’n lightning bolt calf there, the one that’s been inked onto soft flabby skin, bad. And while i’m at it, would kill a parent or two to acutally meet the schools minimum dress code? I mean come on, this this ain’t the gawddamn Walmart Layaway line here, class up a bit.

I’m done. For now.

I like the school, big open spaces, art classrooms that dwarf anything I had in school, a state of the art theatre, so different from high school in California. Our classrooms all opened to the outside where there were covered walkways. Inclement weather was rain and wind, no problemo. I like he big closed in spaces,  I expected to see Molly Ringwold and Judd Nelson come waltzing down the stairs to the Psychedelic Furs. Hey Hey Hey Hey…

Ran across the Po-Po liaison, hope never to hear from him. He looks like a regular teacher except for the Glock on his belt.

French class. Right next door to the German class. I hope the enrollment in German isn’t more than the classroom can handle, there’s a bit of history there that no one wants to see. Except maybe the Japanese classroom across the hall. They might not care if you know what I mean.

So after a walk to the classes, I made her do one more circuit, in order of her day. I’m soo good. After a run through the activities desks it was over. 2 hours of orientation and we were good for now. Until Mrs S starts asking questions about details, then I’m screwed, I’ll tell her what I remember, which I’m sure will come to me over the course of a couple weeks or so, it always seems to work that way.