Smell My Bottom

School is back in full swing, and I am happily adjusting to having both girls at the same place, every day. It's basically glorious having a small sliver of my pre-motherhood life back, minus a flat stomach. To be honest, I'm still pretty shocked that a certain short houseguest of ours was let in school in the first place; the admissions process was dicey, to say the very least. Since the RM's only 3 (that's dog years. She has actually aged all of us by 21, easily.) there wasn't an interview per se - the school instead has professional evaluators check the itty ones out and see if they'd be a good fit. As a parent, your job is to take the kid to school and hang back. Don't introduce yourself to the evaluator, don't talk to them, don't do anything to acknowledge their existence - the whole point is to see how the kid interacts with them and separates from you. I get this, I've done it before. So I give the RM a good scrubdown, slap some church clothes on her and head over.

 

objects in the mirror are stranger than they appear

 



Things went fine. Initially. She's been there so often with her sister and me she thinks she owns the place, so when we walked in the front office she threw her hands up and yelled "I AM HERE!" as if everyone had been tapping their fingers waiting on her to show up and buy the next round of Jager shots. She immediately showed herself back to the Head of School's office to check on Miss Gennie and swipe a few paper clips, then headed to reception to help Miss Emily buzz people inside and get some scribbling under her belt. We don't worry about her comfort level here. She was playing with blocks in the front lobby when the evaluator came out to introduce herself, "Hi! Would you like to come back to my classroom with me and play some games?" The RM looks at her, smiles ever so sweetly and says "Well hello. My name is Shantay Squanto and I'm funky fresh. I have my own gorilla and hot dog cart!" Zero percent of this is true and I have no idea where she got any of it; I didn't see this coming, not at all. I start to sweat. "Oh." says the evaluator. Unsatisfied with the lack of enthusiasm from the audience, the RM then turns around, pulls her dress up and says "smell my bottom. I don't go potty in my panties." At this point I realize breaking the parent rules are probably pretty far down on my list of concerns so I say "ah. Sorry, no. Um. No. All of it." thereby dazzling her with my own verbal skills. I told the woman that perhaps the RM and I should just go sit in the car and let her find a better way to fill the next half hour because clearly this wasn't going to work. Somehow she took pity on us and led the RM away for the evaluation; I sat in the lobby and began researching boarding elementary school programs.

30 minutes later they're done, with nary a glance my way from the evaluator as she walks the RM out. We get in the car and head home. I asked the RM how it had gone, was it fun, what did they do? She told me they'd played and read stories - all good. I'm starting to feel like perhaps it hadn't been a complete train wreck when she tells me she also sang a song. "Oh, that's nice, what song, sweetheart?" "WeeeeeeEEEEEEE are NEVER EVER EVER getting BACK TOGETHER!" Aces. Because a little "Jesus Loves Me" would have killed her.

So, yes, we were pretty shocked to get her letter of acceptance a couple of months later. The only explanation I can come up with is that the school's running an affirmative action program for budding sociopaths, because it sure wasn't that new library we didn't donate. And by the way, lest you judge us for putting a three-year-old in private school just reread that second paragraph and tell me that kid doesn't need some specialized attention. Someone has to teach her how to run that hot dog cart.