Parent Night, or: Six Out of Forty-Four Ain't Bad

So what happened at Parent Night? It wasn’t even a farce. It was too miniscule to be a farce. It may as well have not happened at all.

Who showed up? Four of my A students, one average student, and the school’s worst behavioral problem (who happens to be one of my students). Did you know that students are supposed to go with parents to Parent Night? I did not, probably because anything involving my parents physically present in my high school caused several doomsday scenarios to play out in my head, followed by a swift repression. I’m sure I knew this fact about kids and their parents showing up somewhere deep in my subconscious, but I was not prepared for it.

What am I saying? Parent Night was a snap. Nothing eventful happened. Parents and kids moved from class to class every ten minutes, with the bell ringing just like it does during the day to make the whole thing seem like a Disney ride—“a typical day at school,” only it’s six at night, and the teachers are all ornery over being in the building so long, kind of like Disney employees. Nothing happened… only one minor gem, which looks handsome in sentence form: The school’s worst discipline problem and the school’s worst discipline problem’s mother showed up late to my class. You don’t know how bad I wanted to say, “I refer you during the day. Now I’m fittin’ tuh refer yo mamma!”