Parent Teacher Conferences

Today I attended a parent teacher conference . My opinion on parent teacher conferences is simply this: either your kid is doing just fine or they are not. If the its the former, why waste the time going in? If it's the latter- well, honestly call me when its a crisis, and I'll worry then. My daughter is doing just fine (2nd grade) although she is a little slow on her math facts. The teachers advice, "when you come to a stop light, have her add up or subtract the numbers on the license plate of the car in front of you." Advice I immediately filed in the "Ya Right, When Pigs Fly" folder of my brain while I smiled and nodded. Turns out the joke is on me. After discussing math, we moved on to writing. They are working on writing a true story, something from their life. They had to map out a beginning, middle and end to their story. My daughter's started like this, "My mom went crazy." Her teacher smiled at me and said, "nothing is a secret in 2nd grade." As fate would have it, this summer we went on a road trip. On our l-o-n-g drive home I was exhausted from a week of not enough sleep. I was agitated with my husband. I was trapped in a car with him (and four kids). I'd tell you what his crime was, but it would only make me look worse. Anyone who knows my husband would tell you he is a saint. Sometimes an aggravating, irritating saint, but a saint nonetheless. At any rate, I was mad and the more we I "talked" the angrier I got. Finally, he pulled off the freeway in the middle-of-nowhere-Idaho so I could take a turn driving. He got out, I climbed over into the drivers seat and sped off, leaving my husband standing on the side of the road in middle-of-nowhere-Idaho. This is the true story my 2nd grader had decided to write about. Perhaps I'm off the hook for driving on field trips? As for my husband, well, I took a little drive that lasted all of 1 minute and then went back for him. I felt like I had adequately made my point. Today, my husband had his revenge.