Top Twelve Reasons I Should Have Pulled My Kid Out of Public School

It is as sport to a fool to do mischief: but a man of understanding hath wisdom. ~Proverbs 10:23, KJV

No, it wasn't all the school's fault. This post is not about those controversial public institutions. I would say my daughter and the K-8 school shared this blame, maybe 70-30. And I wouldn't claim I was completely ignorant, either, knowing my daughter had a long daily bus ride, mostly unnecessary, and hearing a few leaked stories that should have gotten my mom radar beeping more loudly.

But now that my daughter is 22, she freely tells me what went on in the aisles, corridors, closets, and bathrooms during her school experience. Recently, for instance, I discovered that in a mid-elementary quest to acquire glasses, she wore her friend's prescription during class. "What?! For an hour or two?" was my horrified response. "Um, no, maybe like two or three months." And the teacher didn't notice this?

Annika has nothing to lose in the telling--I can't pull her out in retrospect. I blanch, I guffaw, but also make pronouncements of what I would have done had I but known what she was up to. The #1 reason, below, demonstrates how good it would have been to at the very least drive her to school and have some edifying mother-daughter time in the car instead of allowing the shenanigans that went on during the commute.

Note: Her name, photo, and details about her life are used with her full permission and blessing.

#12. Asking for candy and money. So it turns out that during early elementary, that little stinker Annika and her friend M. had a custom of going around to older students bugging them for candy and change. I believe at one point, I heard rumors about this behavior and sternly forbade it, but apparently it didn't do much good. The change was for the vending machine; there were goodies like pop tarts and chips that these two felt were more important than their dignity.

#11. Scorpion. My kid would come home with gouges in her hand. Upon inquiry, it turned out she was playing a "game" on the bus where the players would dig their nails into each other's hands and see who could stand it the longest. I had a serious talk with my daughter, telling her that she would have permanent scars (she does) that she would regret (she doesn't). She was never to play this game again (she did).

#10. Eating L.'s Breakfast. Turns out that Annika's bowl of frosted shredded wheat around the breakfast table wasn't enough for her. No, every morning her friend L. would pass on having the government-provided breakfast she qualified for, and Annika would happily volunteer to eat it. The meal included items I would only give my daughters were there no alternatives: muffins, "fruit," and that sweet yogurt in little tubes, for instance.

#9. The Fairy Stage. This is not what it sounds like. In third and fourth grade, Annika went through a wholesome, although self-conscious, obsession with fairies of cultural lore fed by popular book and movie franchises. This led to her signing her name as "Tinkerbell" on the bathroom sign-out sheet and complaining to the teacher that the boys kept changing her handle to "Stinkerbell." The teacher blandly suggested that she write "Annika" and went back to her work. My daughter also told a sub that she had been named after that popular Disney fairy, and got away with it. She was pleased when she heard a boy describe her to someone else as "that girl who's really into fairies."

#8. The Boys' Bathroom Club. During Annika's successful but short-lived career on a jump rope team, she was the founder and leader of an informal organization that ran around the empty hallways after school and investigated the boys' bathrooms. She somehow had the opportunity to conduct club activities during practice, when I blissfully imagined she was hard at work honing her fancy moves. (I resigned her from the jump rope team because her grades were tanking.)

#7. Truth or Dare. In the context of this classic game passed down from one generation to the next, it makes total sense why your kid would lick the floor of the bus and eat a bug. Right? You haven't really lived until you've done something gross with your peers. But if that's the standard, Annika's got us all beat.

#6. The Lunch Debt. Annika had a marvelous year in first grade, with a teacher who played guitar and called worksheets "fun packets." Yet we couldn't understand why we kept getting bills from the cafeteria. Turns out our daughter was raising her hand during morning housekeeping when asked who was getting hot lunch. I mean, who wouldn't favor a noontime repast in the school cafeteria instead of a cold sandwich and an apple lovingly packed by your mother at home? If it's as easy as signaling with a lift of a hand, I'd do it, too. Anyone would think we didn't feed our child.

#5. Band Wedding. This is a little strange and hard to describe, but the kids had a quirky music teacher who finally gave in to their pleas to stage a little wedding ceremony during junior high band class. They identified the lucky bride and groom, who had a crush on each other (it was a traditional event) and classmates who would be standing up for the couple. Annika was a maid of honor, and the teacher provided accompaniment on his trumpet.

#4. Band Closet. Same band teacher, same class—interestingly named Advanced Band. Annika and her buddy decided to try hiding in the closet to find out whether or not they would be missed during class. They were not.

#3. Disastrous Locker. Eighth-grader places an unopened carton of milk in the locker. A helpful individual at some point walks by and secures the locker with an unfamiliar lock. Eighth grader discovers she cannot get her locker open. Oh well. Time elapses. Sweet classmate starts noticing the odor. Commenting on it: "There's a really bad smell near my locker." Janitor is summoned. He cuts the lock off, the milk is discarded, and everyone is happy. Except for the taxpayer.

#2. Hallway Electives. At some point in eighth grade English, both my daughters, two years apart, made the decision to stop completing the vocabulary exercises, opting to save their energy for the weekly quiz. The teacher, nearing retirement, sent empty-handed students out to the hallway while assignment answers were being checked. Apparently this unstructured time with friends was great fun. And what would you do if you had a few minutes with your peers? Chat? Make paper airplanes? Or block one nostril and snort up ramen seasoning from the back of your hand? For Annika, it was ramen powder all the way.

And the #1 reason why I should have pulled my kid out of school . . . The Daily Bus Beverage. I have so many questions, mostly why. Why did that girl on the bus (the bride from #5) even possess an expensive Monster drink every morning? Why did she give it to Annika? Why did my eighth grader choose to imbibe? Fortunately, Annika was never very sensitive to caffeine, and she appears to have suffered no ill effects from her habit.

I write this as my college grad is in bed early once again to get up before dawn and work hard at her job, after a weekend of chummily assisting me with tasks, laughing at the dinner table, cleaning in the basement, and solicitously serving me when I was ill.

She'll be alright.