"I have to do that?"

AS IF I needed a reminder of my rapidly advancing age, I often find myself starting out a sentence with the phrase, "When I was your age..." which is horrifying, really, because THAT'S WHAT OLD PEOPLE SAY.

I had one of those moments today, when I tried to check my son out of school.

(FTR, I originally wrote a post slamming mommy bloggers. But then I reconsidered whether I really wanted to piss off 25 million women. So instead, you get a totally benign post about trying to check my kid out of school. You're welcome.)

Now, when I was your age, checking out of school was easy: My mom would call up and say, "Kalisa needs to check out." and I was o-u-t outta there. Not anymore. Now you practically need a notorized court order just to get the schools to hand over your own child.

This morning, around 10 or so, Elijah texts me, "Is there any way you can check me out?"

(To be fair, I was surprised he even got up & went this morning. It was the last day before a four-day weekend and he was already laying the groundwork last night when he said, "All we're doing tomorrow is watching movies in FOUR of my classes!" So the fact that he made it a half-day was more than I was expecting.)

So I call up the school and listen to this very lengthy pre-recorded list of options, from which I select "Attendance," and when the woman answers, I say, "I'm calling to check out my son."

And she says - very mistrustful-like, as though I had just said, "My son won the Nobel Peace prize today" - "Okaaaay...why is he checking out?"

Uhhh, none of your goddammed business? Seriously, when is a parent saying, "I'm taking my child out of school" not good enough?

And then she says, "Are you going to come in and sign him out?"

And I was all, "I have to do that?"

And she said, "Yes. Or fax us a copy of your drivers license along with a note explaining why he's checking out."

And I'm thinking, "I'm sorry...fax you a copy of my drivers license???"

But what I, ever the bold boat-rocker, actually said was, "What's the fax number?"

Then - I guess because I didn't pitch a fit and she saw what an intelligent and reasonable adult she was dealing with - she apologizes to me and explains, "It's just that before a holiday we have a lot of parents calling up to take their kids out, and a lot of kids calling up trying to take other kids out." Which, I get what she's trying to say, even though I'm sort of offended at how she said it.

Because I don't understand what's changed. Have the students become more conniving? Or have the schools just gotten a lot tougher on skipping? And why all the focus on proving a student is sick, just because his mother has asked permission for him to leave? It makes me want to make up some horrible excuse like, "He needs to go to a police line up to see if he can recognize the man who murdered both his grandparents this weekend."

But really, I would only do that if I actually went in to sign him out. So I could see her face.

In the end, they let him leave and I got a call from my 16-year-old son that went like this:

Me: "Hello?"
E: "Have I told you lately how much I love you?"

So the moral to the story is, if you help your kid skip school, no matter what kind of hoops you have to jump through to do it, there's a good chance you might get some display of love or appreciation from him. So WIN!