No Cuts, No Buts, No Coconuts!

Gary and I are going back to school!!

Thought that would get your attention! Tonight is Parent Orientation Night at the school. Oh joy to be had! I can not wait to attend another fine round of this. I was very nervous the year Hannah was in Kindergarten to attend this. My goodness... what would the other parent's think of us? Would we find out that our child turned into the Devil's spawn on the schooll bus? What if she was always butting in the lunch line? Hannah has a sing-song that she does if anyone gets in front of her. She'll yell at you "Hey! No cuts, No buts, No coconuts! Move it!" This leads me to believe she is not the one doing any cutting in.

Anyway, back to the excitement of Parent Orientation. First of all, I know we'll be late getting there. We always are. I don't know what happens... we have all good intentions... but we are always late. The phone will ring as we are going out the door or I'll have to go the bathroom, but I assure you, something will come up. Then everyone glares at us (minus points right there) . And lastly, Gary will go into a rampage (after we walk in and everyone is staring at us) about the size of the chairs and how the hell is an adult with any type of ass supposed to sit in a chair less than 10 inches off the ground for any length of time. Of course, at this point the teacher will say "Oh my goodness, you poor thing, here take my comfy, adult size chair that I'm sitting in! Sir, we only make the parents sit in those chairs so we can see who we can intimidate! Obviously, that is not you" Gary will, of course, decline her chair and proceed to groan, throw and flop his way down into the little chair and then look around at everyone watching him. "What?' he'll say,wondering what everyone is looking at, "You can go ahead and continue." Meanwhile, I am literally dying of embarrassment in my little chair and I have no idea how I am going to get up out of it in an hour.

Then the questions begin from the parents.

"How do I know if my child has eaten his lunch?"

"Are you certified to teach my kid?"

"Will the children have homework and can I do it for them?"

"Where's the lost & found?"

"How the frig do I get out of this chair?"

And so it goes. Another year of school. I'm not sure what the difference is this year but Hannah is really loving it. She can hardly stand waiting to get on the bus to go. Last year after the first day she said "Mom, that was ok and all that, but I think I've had enough of school." It made the rest of the year fairly difficult. I know there were a couple kids in her class that were relentless in wanting her to play a certain way, play certain games and always be with them and I think it was too much. If Hannah wanted to play something different they would pull the all-time child trump card "Fine, Hannah. You're not MY friend anymore!" and Hannah's little happy spirit doesn't like to be crushed that way. Neither one of those children are in her classroom this year (thank God!) and I think she will blossom because of it.

In closing, I am happy to report the findings of a study I read from Daimler Corporation. You see, my husband used to be a Ford man. I could not persuade him that the 1979 Ford F-150 was not the coolest thing on the planet. Then came the Dodge Dakota and we hit paydirt. He was hooked on Dodge. God help us when those hemi's came out. He was on a quest to have one and now he has three. Four if you include the riding lawnmower. Anyhoo, the Dodge Ram is the cat's ass as far as he's concerned and Dodge did a study to find out why men love them so much. Here's what they found: