Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Catching, witching and hair


We had a great Memorial Day weekend, but due to the crackerjack planning of the Tooele County School District after the three day break everyone returned to school for three more days.
DS-L’s sixth grade class was scheduled to go on a field trip to the local swimming pool for a communal dip with 500 of his closes friends. He didn’t want to go, so I went to school at noon thirty and picked up both boys.
Tomorrow is another short day and Thursday they will be let out of school at 1:05 p.m. for the summer. Does anyone have any idea why a school district would plan this kind of schedule? It can’t just be to annoy parents and teachers, can it?
This morning before going to pick up the DS’s I stood in the bathroom with my long wet hair stringing in front of my face and did something truly outrageous.
I trimmed my bangs.
It was a most bold move on my part. I have been subjected to many a failed home perm and botched haircut session at the hands of my mother, and thus long ago vowed never to touch my hair with anything sharper than a curling iron.
But I was the point of taking a razor to the stuff and shaving it off down to the roots. Keeping this in mind, the bang trimming was remarkably successful. I no longer have stringy, lanky bits falling in my eyes, and I don’t look like someone took after me with a weed whacker.
Thus buoyed by my success, I was tempted to try my hand at trimming the little Dutch girl locks of a boy playing against DS-A’s baseball team this evening. I know we’ve all seen kids like this. He has spit blond hair trimmed straight across just below eye level.
When he got up to bat his mother, a most charming, woman sitting in front of me, immediately started yelling at him because he swung at a high pitch, reminding the child he wasn’t playing tennis.
She continued with her most un-dulcet tone to rail against him whether he swung at the ball or not. When he struck out she fetched him over to the bleachers where she berated him for “playing like a girl.” I briefly thought if she did not want him to play like a girl, she might reconsider giving him a girl’s haircut.
Her nastiness to this boy made us all supremely uncomfortable, but no one, not even the burly guys with barbed wire tattoos on their biceps seemed willing to take her on. I thought about saying something to her, but I was pretty sure she would knock me cold. And as I was my children’s only ride home, I decided to hold my tongue.
But the game was fun for A. He was asked to play catcher for the final inning and had a glorious time. Between his catching and the pitchers pitching they managed to strike a couple of kids out.
The photos are of A playing with the newest toy in our backyard, a sprinkler that throws balls in the air. I think we had better get him a new – not white – swimsuit for this summer.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is some seriously wacked out school scheduling... I'm sure it's wreaking havoc at your local public library as well as at home!

Pi-day Dave said...

It's called babysitting. That's all it is.

Anonymous said...

I love the creative cropping on the white suit pictures. I remember sitting by a lovely woman during one of Lisa's basketball games. She kept screaming at her daughter to hit Lisa in the mouth. At the end of the game I was so mad I turned to her and said. "You know I think consistency is so important, I want to thank you for behaving like an ass for the entire game." It was the only time I ever really got in someone's face, but I just had to say something. She took just long enough to get it that I was out of reach by the time it sank in, or she might have hit me in the mouth.