$chool Daze

There are a couple of things you can count on when your child attends school. Number one: You can guarantee the expensive new shoes your child begged you for will be scuffed from the playground, day one. Secondly, your child(ren) will turn you into a walking, talking bank machine.

From the first day they walk into that school in kindergarten until they leave grad school, the kids have a chronic case of the 'Can I's'.

"I need money for registration fees."
This is all inclusive, and may include fees that you thought might not even possibly be included in this cockamamie registration fee. Fees for 'agendas' that you have to sign every night to ensure the teacher that yes, you have seen their homework, have done their homework for them, and are now cursing the aforementioned homework.

Presentation fee: The fee that includes all performances in the school gym. Sweaty gymsock odor and microphone feedback is extra.

Gym Uniform fee: $40.00 for the gym uniform that you will see once after waiting two months for its delivery, and will discover two years later, two sizes too small, in a crumpled, dirty heap in the lost and found bin.

"I need money for a trip."
When I went to school, it was a big deal for my parents to come up with the two or five dollars required to visit all the places like Pioneer vilage, Ontario Place, or the Science Centre. My kids don't seem to go to any of these places. They visit all these apple farms all the time and it costs roughly fifteen dollars per kid. And payable by cheque ONLY. That really pisses me off, especially when the school doesn't cash the cheque until two months later when I'm least expecting it and it makes other, more important, cheques bounce. Bastards.

"Can I have money for the pop machine at school?" At my kids' school, there is a vending machine in the hallway. It does not sell pop, just water and juice, but for some reason, it is some sort of status symbol for a fourth or fifth grader to be seen with a ginormous bottle of juice that costs $1.50 that he or she will not drink.

"Pizza day"
Again, when I was a kid, it seemed that we had pizza day maybe once every couple of months. It was meant as a treat. These days every little bit of money siphoned from parents' pockets is for some kind of fundraiser. Pizza day is no exception. My kids' school holds a pizza day every week. At $4.00 per kid, times two kids, is $8.00 per week, times 35 weeks, is about an extra $242.00 per year. BASTARDS! That goddamm school is making me go broke.

"Picture day is coming. Tomorrow."
$35.00 for one 8 x 10, two 2 x 3s, and 4,825 wallet sized photos. The 8 x 10 will be displayed (after the retakes because the first set revealed your child's messy hair and something in their teeth) and the first 4 wallets will be given away. The leftovers will be stashed as extras to be given away, wrap chewing gum in, whatever. The rest will be forgotten, never to be seen again.

"The project I was assigned two months ago that I haven't started is due tommorrow. I have to build a castle and a moat, completely authentic. We should go to the store, they close in half an hour."
You will be required to go on a half ass scavenger hunt in Shopper's Drug Mart at 11:52 pm. You will threaten to strangle the hell out of the person trying to grab the last pack of popsicle sticks you're eyeing. You will grow claws and fangs at 3:00 am, when all the popsicle sticks you just finished gluing together with four pounds of glue collapse in a heap from the weight. You will collapse in a heap at 5:00 am, your child having gone to bed 9 hours earlier. Three hours later you will tote with the utmost care the project you have slaved over to school in the family minivan, and will the see it come back 6 hours later when you pick up your child, as they shrug and say, "The teacher liked it.".

And that's just grade school.