Oops. In Trouble Again.

Picture it: Middle School….Open House….parents acting like responsible adults…chewing gum, talking loudly in the halls, whilst walking on the left…you get the idea.

I’d barely escaped with my life from the snake wrapped around Connor’s science teacher and now I was walking around with my barbeque bugs in my Neosporin case.

I was almost there….two more periods to go and I was outta there. When we entered the class for honors math (yeah, I’m bragging…just a bit), we were told to take the index card with our child’s name off the table.

I sat down next to a dad. You don’t usually see too many dads at these things…especially during the day. We smiled and nodded in greeting and turned our attention to the teacher.

Teacher asked us to verify that the name and contact info on the card were correct. I don’t know what he said after that, as I was intent on adding my cell number and email address to my card. A moment later, I hear the dad next to me chuckle. I glanced over at him thinking, “It doesn’t take much to amuse you, eh buddy? Name and address is funny to you?” He looks at me and says out of the corner of his mouth, “Turn the card over.”

The teacher’s still droning about grade curves and being prepared for class…and then he calls our attention to the back of our index cards. He explains that the students were to write what part of math they struggled with, so they could set that as a goal to overcome for the year:

At this moment, the dad starts to laugh. I sneak him a sqinty look and he says, “Look at the hobbies on the bottom. My daughter put 'shopping, trying on clothes and going to the mall' as her top three.”

Now the teacher calls our attention to the “hobbies” portion, explaining that he’d like his students to understand that “math is everywhere…in everything you do”.

This is when I glance at my son’s hobbies…and I felt the laughter bubbling up in my throat. I broke into a huge grin and covered my mouth with my hand in a vain attempt to hold back the inevitable burst of laughter. The dad’s watching me and he whispers, “What?” and I flip the card in his direction for him to see.

He looks….and he starts to laugh. Then I start to laugh. I looked down at the desk in an effort to control myself, but I could still peripherally see him shaking…

“STOP!” I whisper…"You’re gonna get us in trouble." He says “Let me see it,” and I casually pass the card across to him.

I hear him start to snicker and he hands the card back.

“Did you see where he ran out of room and wrote down the card?” he whispers…and his voice is shaking….he sounded like he was either going to explode or stroke out.

“Take a picture,” he says.

“Okay,” I say.

We’ve missed a good portion of the teacher’s lecture at this point…and I’ve now got the daunting task of finding the “take a picture” option on my cell. I’m adjusting…moving in closer...framing it out…and I hit “take picture”.

CLICK!!!!!

(I’d forgotten to put my cell on “mute”.)

20 heads turn simultaneously and look at me in surprise.

Teacher says “Excuse me? Is there a problem?”

I apologized…just as the bell rang. See Connor’s list below. Now, how do you suppose his #1 hobby can be translated into a math equation? Anyone??