Are you sure that I can’t fill out and/or sign another field trip form, fundraising form, class placement form, book order form, class party form, popsicle request, overdue library books notice, missing library books notice, school district feedback form, or one month of half-filled-out reading logs?
Are you sure that I can’t contribute to one last bake sale or five? Are you sure that I can’t make it something that’s gluten-free, nut-free, egg-free, dairy-free, non-GMO, organic, and/or won’t hurt anyone’s feelings? Are you sure bright pink fake fat frosting from a can won’t work? Have I mentioned I have the culinary skills of a pile of rocks?
Are you sure that I can’t send in money for a yearbook? A class trip to get ice cream sandwiches? A PTO donation? A visiting author’s signed book? Tickets for the end-of-school year party? A baseball game? The goddamn recorders I didn’t even want my kids to have in the first place?
Are you sure that I can’t get the money to you in the form of a check because I’m a pioneer woman? Are you positive you don’t want to accept PayPal or Square or—no, I know. That’s crazy. You’re not a spaceship.
Are you sure that I can’t chaperone one or all eleven of the field trips between now and the last day of school? Don’t worry, I no longer have time to hold down a job. By the way, remember all that time between January and April? What happened there?
Are you sure that there isn’t some sort of spring concert, adorable play, other emotionally manipulative school event to go to now or every night until the last day of school? You know, something where maybe one of the boys can wear a too-big tie or the tallest girl in class can shyly stoop down in the back row? Maybe it could be a third-grade dance or a fifth-grade graduation? That sort of thing.
Are you sure that 273 art projects couldn’t be sent home all at once? Preferably stuffed into a flimsy about-to-split-open plastic grocery bag? Are you sure you aren’t giving me some other kid’s stuff, too?
Are you sure that there can’t be some sort of complicated theme weeks that my kids can get all whipped up over even though they could barely manage to pair a shirt with pants the other 41 weeks of the year? If possible, could it be something where we’ll have to gather an incredibly random assortment of props on extremely short notice? Maybe an orange wig, two different colors of the same style of shoes, and a sports jersey from 1991? Just spitballing here. Can you make sure that any errands related to each theme can be spread out amongst multiple locations across town thereby obliterating one entire day from the scoreboard of my life?
Are you sure that a room parent can’t come up with one or three end-of-year classroom projects like that one time when we had two days’ notice for each kid to cut out 38 2” x 2” squares for a paper mosaic project? And I mean 2” x 2” exactly, it said so in the e-mail. Something complicated and requiring extreme precision is exactly the sort of thing I’m in the mood for right now. Got anything like that?
Are you sure that I can’t get you a teacher gift? Are you sure that I can’t read two or five shitty mom blog posts about what an appropriate teacher gift might be? Are you sure I can’t just get you a nice bottle of wine? I have one right here, it’s already open.
Are you sure you need to give me that summer reading list-library flyer-academic camp brochure? Are you sure that I can’t just let my kids get dumber by 1/3rd until they come back here in the fall like we all used to?
Are you sure you can’t make me panic more about how little time I have until the school year is almost over? So I can be reminded that the only thing that allows me to approach my work with any sort of mental and structural stability (not to mention without going bankrupt, ha!) is about to go away for ten weeks? I’m not panicking enough about that. Can you help me?