I consider myself to be a fairly forward thinker. Someone with clear vision that can see ahead and understand the why and how of things. However, yesterday I had a moment where I felt old. Very old.
I was sitting here, at this desk, working on a project. I was creating an external memory palace to store memories and objects I need to return to. Things that used to not have a logical place. I would save them and they would either end up in the download folder, the documents folder, or another documents folder that sprung up from some alternative reality.
While working on that Windsor, who was home sick from throwing up in the morning, came to me very sad and upset that he was missing his Valentine’s Day party. He wasn’t and I had no idea until I was driving him to school and my wife was questioning me on the matter. I said he’d be fine. He was acting better. Must have just been a sour stomach in the morning and he got it all out.
He was showing good initiative by wanting to go to school and I didn’t want to waste that. This is the mentality we want. It is better to show up late than not at all, and a minor setback in the morning doesn’t impact the afternoon. All good things. Instead we got a different lesson.
The school wouldn’t take him. He got to class. Told them he had been sick in the morning but got better and was sent to the clinic. Which in my day the clinic’s one goal was to get you back to class. Missing class was an abhorrent thing that could only happen due to death or dismemberment. We would be encourage to go to school with the flu and congratulated on pushing through. School existed not only for education but to weed out the weak. It is why we had 20 foot high rope climbs in the gym.
So I was a little surprised when I got a call to go pick up the kid I just dropped off. Here I was all proud of him for showing good initiative and the school didn’t want to reward him for it. Instead they wanted to send him home so he didn’t make anyone else sick. Getting him back out of the school was another challenge, because when Windsor wants something it is going to take an army to stop him and he wanted to go back to class.
This is where we pulled out one of my bag of tricks. We walked into the office to see the principal. We didn’t make it that far but saying you’d like a policy exemption stops everyone in their tracks and Windsor was able to hand off his Valentine’s Cards for delivery.
When we got back to the car I told him the two important lessons he learned from today is never tell anyone the truth unless they need to know it, and two, escalate quickly. The escalating quickly works even better if you’ve kissed some ass before getting to that point. It never hurts to have a principal in your corner when you’re in school.
David Huzzard Writes 