First Grade Angst

And so it begins…….A glorious foreshadow of the next 11 years of my life!

As most of you are aware Monday was the first day of school for my eldest offspring.  He really seemed to enjoy his kindergarten experience from last year so I wasn’t too concerned about him entering the full day hell that is the first grade.  The week leading up to the first day were properly advertised as any good parent knows to do to a small child.  Most of us do not have issue with directly lying to a child so telling them that school is AWESOME is not a problem.  He bought it hook, line and sinker and was actually looking forward to going to first grade and all of the AWESOME experiences that he was “told” would happen for him during his advancement of education in the school district.

{random complaint}

Look my boy is 6 years old and he for some reason bleeds Green and White which are the colors of his school district.  How did this happen?  Did he drink the tainted Kool-Aid?  Do they brain wash the children at this place?  I find this incredible….the school district must have the most talented PR folks in the world.  I have lived in this area for almost 4 years now and not a single child or parent (unless they are just bitter and old) dislikes the school for ANY REASON!! 
I am OK with the boy loving his school, I just want to know how they accomplished this feat.  I wonder if their methods can be applied to things like vegetables?!?

{end random complaint}

The day before school starts the wife and boy go to the local sporting goods store (DICKS of course, do any others exist?) to buy new school shoes and all goes well.  The boy was still excited about the next morning when he goes to school.  There was the small issue of the wife not enjoying the type of shoes he decided he couldn’t live without but I assume as parents we will just have to get used to that kind of thing.  9pm rolls around and the boys go to bed….he is still pumped about getting up for school.

The next morning there is suddenly a change of heart….the boy absolutely doesn’t want to go to school let alone get out of bed.  We have to catch the bus at 8:18 sharp….long story short we finally dragged his ass out of bed and started down to the bus stop new backpack, pencils, crayons and glue sticks in tow.  The bus stop is loaded with kids from the neighborhood laughing, playing and simply causing a commotion for such an early hour.  My son is near tears refusing to speak to anyone at the bus stop.  He is glued to my hip…where the hell did this come from??  Several adults at the bus stop attempt to talk to him and he is having nothing to do with it…..(being rude is a pet peeve for me but I let it go in this situation.)  Finally one of his neighborhood buddies shows up at the bus stop and the idea is put fourth that maybe they should sit together.  This seems to be tolerable to the boy.  The bus finally shows up and they board and sit together….he looks out of the bus window at me and suddenly I am hit with the fact that at that very moment my son looks like one of the kids in a refugee camp being forced to travel to a hard labor yard for the day.  That sucked.

So off to work for the day wondering when I will get the call from the nurse that my son needs picked up from school due to some phantom illness or attempting to burn down the school.  This call to my surprise doesn’t happen.  I head home to hear about his first day of school, it must have gone well if he didn’t fake some sort of life threatening disease to go home.  He is kinda smart in that way.

It took a lot to get any type of information out of him about the first day but here is what he enjoyed about his first day in order:

1.    Going home on the bus
2.    Riding to school on the bus
3.    Lunch
4.    Recess
5.    Walking to the class from the bus

Yeah that’s it.  This institution of higher learning that he so loves really needs to step it up if those are the 5 best things about a kids day.  The following follow-up questions were asked:

1.    What did you learn today? – nothing
2.    Did you have any classes like Math? – nope
3.    Who do you sit by in class? – 2 girls, one is nice, I hate the other one.
4.    Is the one you think is nice hot? (my question) – NO DAD!!  I don’t want to talk about it anymore!!

To top off the kids first day he managed to lose his new lunchbox and afternoon snack.

If his days don’t get better this may be the longest 11 years of my life!!!