Ride of the Mama Bear
In a few minutes I’m going to be on a phone meeting with one of the Sullen One’s advisers. I understand they like it much better when you just shut up and do what they tell you, but unfortunately that is not the way I’m made. If they want him to waste three hours a week on a bus for a twenty-minute meeting, when he could be doing homework, they’d better have a damn compelling reason they can express to me rather than “He just needs to do it.”
Because that’s not a reason. That’s a petty exercise of bureaucratic power, which is one of those things that sets me in my ever so polite, “I don’t understand this, help me understand” mode. Translation, “You’d better give me a good reason, because I’m not going to roll over, sir/madam.”
It is interesting for me to note the change in attitude between institutional letters or messages sent to the Sullen One as a powerless, hapless victim, and the attitude evinced when I, as an adult, step in. People who don’t think twice about treating Le Sullen badly because of his age and social status are suddenly brought up hard and short, strap their “yes ma’am” and “no ma’am” on tight, and suddenly become reasonable.
It’s also fun to see them meet me in person and register the nose ring. I think everyone should have a little uncertainty in their social hierarchy, and sometimes it’s my duty to provide it. By which I mean I enjoy in effect saying “F%$k your preconceived notions. I’m an adult and an equal, and you are going to treat me like one.”
I don’t mind tilting at bureaucratic windmills for the sake of mah kidlings. The Selkie’s remark that I tend to look for offense on behalf of the wee ones is valid here. I try to be reasonable–that’s why I use the “Help me understand” method. Because I often don’t. These little people are human beings too, and treating them like pegs to be fitted into holes OR like robots whose compliance can be forced doesn’t make sense to me.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Teachers largely go into teaching because they like children and want to make the world a better place. (It sure as hell isn’t for the money.) Unfortunately, our society decides to spend a million times more on war than it does on education, so teachers get brutally economically abused. That sort of thing will leave a mark even on the most idealistic.
Remember that scene between Carl the janitor and Richard the assistant principal in The Breakfast Club? Where Carl says, “They didn’t change. You did.”
A certain amount of that solidification is necessary to become a reasonably adult human being. Ideally, it should be that you learn not to let things bug you. But all too often it becomes a blind grasping for control, wherever and however one can grab it. Kids hate that and will resist it with every fibre of their beings, and I’m not so sure they shouldn’t. And unfortunately, teachers get tired, and that blind grasp for control is just so they can get through one more day.
So I guess I’m pointing out that I’m not blaming the teachers or the kids. I understand both sides and both sets of motivations. But I’ll be damned if I let that stand in the way of my kids. I vote for school bonds, I pay taxes, I’ll pick up the slack too and advocate for my wee ones. (Yanniconny, some day I want to get together and pick yer brains and have a good old-fashioned henclucking session about this.) It’s my job to do that without being a total beeeyotch. Which I’m trying, really hard, to do.
Anyway, it’s time for the call. I’m waiting for it. I’ve got my uniform on, my smile strapped in place, and I’m ready to play. I’m good at this game, which is really no solace. I wish it wasn’t necessary.
But it is. So I’m going to be as good at it as I have to be, I guess. While smiling and being polite.
Beware the smiling woman with the nose ring, man. She’s dangerous.
UPDATE: Well, the meeting went off fine. The compromise I proposed turned out to be the compromise they took over and proposed to me. I managed to sound like it was a new idea and a relief.
Heh. That is called catching more flies with honey than vinegar. But really, my gramma would say, who wants flies?
That’s the trouble with cliches. They end up ruining perfectly good metaphors. They are truly…
…wait for it…
…flies in the ointment.
I’m going to go make cookies now.
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