Today I picked the girls up early because Franny had to go to the dentist. A mom in the entryway pounced on me instantly once she figured out I was Franny’s mom.
“Oooh, this is the famous Franny! Madison loooooves Franny!” New kids always loooove Franny because she’s all nice and welcoming and diplomatic and crap. SIGH. Where did I go wrong?
Madison’s mother immediately tried to set up a playdate. Franny had told me a couple of weeks ago that Madison was “kind of weird” so I wasn’t ready to immediately commit her to an afternoon of hell. I had a feeling like an invisible hand was creeping up and gaining a tight grip around my throat. This year I try to avoid other parents whom I am not already friends with at all costs.
“ALSO,” the mother went on, loudly, as the other afternoon kids attempted to nap nearby, “I work up north, and I am trying to find someone to take my kids if there’s some kind of an emergency. What if there’s an earthquake or something? I don’t even know what the school would do.”
This was all starting to sound like a personal problem, and I tried to back away. Strudel was moving so slowly that I was sure that small lizards in equatorial regions were losing vestigial toes in the time it was taking her to get her backpack and shoes.
“STRUDEL!” I stage whispered. “Focus, child.” She smiled at my eye daggers.
I assured Madison’s mom that I was desperately looking for nine-to-five work at the moment and could be employed at ANY MINUTE, and that we would consider a weekend playdate on the odd weekend that Franny wasn’t with her grandparents or her father, and we didn’t have anything important to do like shampoo our wombat.
“Ohhh, that’s too bad,” she said. “We like to have playdates after school.”
This is it. I have hit the wall. I never want to hear the word “playdate” ever again. I want my children to play, but if one more stranger comes up to me wishing to engage in negotiations about my child’s busy and important social life, I am going to start flinging my own poo. I can’t take it any more.
A friend of mine who has been trapped in this school longer than me absolutely assured me that this change would come over me, as it has come over the older parents. I see the new parents, excited and enthusiastic, thinking that the school will be part of their social circle. I see the old parents, tired, grumpy, and burned out. Not speaking to each other. The word “playdate” is never uttered.
I have become the Wisteria Lane outcast here, which I’m okay with. I don’t see anyone and they don’t see me. I drop off and pick up my children at odd times. I put on my headphones after drop off and literally run away from the school. There’s no standing around chit-chatting with the working parents; they have someplace to be, and things to do.
I think about Strudel’s old class, with the three-hour day, and about how the mommies in that class would hiss that Strudel’s new class, for working parents, was glorified day care. Day care or not, it’s saner, rather than some kind of toxic bog. I wanted to cry last year when I was in the office working on the auction and Strudel’s teacher heaved a devistating sigh before returning to Strudel’s class with the words “Well, back to the pit.” I see Strudel’s new, young teachers enthusiastically greet her every morning and say how nice it is to see her smiling face and I feel better. Sometimes cutting yourself off from that mess is just the thing.
