How To Be A Parent On The Outside While Laughing Your Butt Off On The Inside
The Official Party Line is: *ahem* “I’m very upset and disappointed, young man.” Which is what I said, while leaning against the wall, arms crossed in That Way.
And that’s as far as I got before I couldn’t stop laughing and had to *turn my head and face out of the room.
*This is a perfected parenting move where you’re working not to laugh your butt off, but you turn your head and look away so that the child being reprimanded, scolded, grounded, brought within an inch of his life, whatever-you-want-to-call-it, thinks that you’re turning away in something like exasperation and “Oy! Go raise children!” or looking up to heaven all Heaven Help Me. And if you’re really good at it you can even bring your hand to your mouth and make it look like you’re holding back the floodgates because you’re heart is breaking. But actually, it’s another deft move designed to cover the laughing and keep in the pressure inside your mouth that is reaching epic proportions and getting This Close to blowing your dental work across the room.
Back story:
So Beta Male is doing well in math. As in he absolutely does not get this ability from me. He gets it from his mother who was a Phi Beta Kappa Kappa Ramalamadingdong IDon’tKnowWhatTheHellThatIs but she can keep all the numbers in the western hemisphere tallied in her head all day long and then hand them off to her brother who is (brace yourself) degreed out the wazoo in (brace yourself again) ‘theoretical math’ which is (okay, really brace yourself this time) high mathematics involving numbers that don’t actually exist.
As far as I’m concerned, numbers are just art and I’m only half-joking.
So. Beta Male is advancing to the next higher level of math everytime we turn around. Awesome, right? Right. I have one concern and one concern only, and it’s this: that he never tips the scale in knowing how proud we are of him such that he fears ever disappointing us with a grade which the gods would frown upon but which we mortals would just tilt our heads and go, ‘…wait. You just solved cold fusion on the napkin in your Drake & Josh lunchbox?’
This morning I’m doing all the Morning Things Before School, like drink enough coffee to make the Budweiser Clydesdales Riverdance their way right into America’s heart. And while I was doing all that this morning, Beta comes before the Throne of Awesome Power and confesses that he needs me to sign his math test.
Because the grade he got on it was (this is shameful, I admit)…okay, I don’t actually know what the grade was because I didn’t even look at it. There were breakfasts to be made, lunches to be made, little baby second grade girls to fuss after, and thirteen year old boys to fist-bump-later-dad-later-bud. I don’t have time for a grand jury over some math test where Beta male descended from his lofty heights and treated numbers like the humans.
But that didn’t stop him from fairly throwing himself at the mercy of the court which garnered my compassion and my understanding. Which is not hard to do with this one because he’s one of those Middle Children who can’t live under the weight of having disappointed a parent, and, of course, I couldn’t possilby know anything about that.
So I soothed and fawned and assured and c’merelil’manned him up one side and down the other *musses up his already mussed up hair* gimme that ol’ test, tiger, *sign *sign *sign Now Go Have An Adventure, Nemo!
And then sent him off to school.
And then went down to my office all liquored coffeed up and ready to start the day’s waltz…
…where I found the scrap of paper in the photo above.
The little hack had been practicing FORGING! MY! SIGNATURE!
Forging MY signature!
FORGING! MY! SIGNATURE!
At which point I found myself knocked senseless between the onslaught of Oh You Will Regret This One Buster and the blitz of Ha Ha! I am SO proud of that! That’s just what I tried at his age! Yay!
I couldn’t stop laughing. The whole Father Forgive Me For I Have Sinned thing? Yeah. Totally gamed me. Played me like a fiddle.
He wasn’t upset that he bit it on the test. He was upset that he couldn’t perfectly imitate my signature and had to bail on that attempt and come clean. And though I do blame him for trying, I don’t blame him for failing. If you’ve ever seen me write in real life and in person, it would weird you out. It’s all I’ve ever known so the novelty wore off well over forty years ago. But it would weird you out if you’ve never seen me write. Because I’m a lefty. Which is not a big deal. Except that I’m what I’ve heard called a Hard Lefty, meaning that…
…okay, so you know how Lefties are all wired all wrong and weird and left-like, and so they turn their hands that weird wrong left-like way? Yeah, well I never learned how to do that. And even when the nuns tried showing me how to do it, I didn’t like it because Lefties push their hands across the paper left-to-right. And I didn’t like pencil smudges all over my hand. Or all over my math homework artwork.
So, my brain decided Mortals Are Charming. Stupid, But Charming and so I turned the paper instead. And had the last laugh because from that day forward I started writing vertically. And since the nuns had heard rumors about some kid called Damien, they weren’t taking any chances and just backed away slow and let it lie.
Which was good because writing vertically lasted about a day and then I started turning the paper even more upside-down-like. And had another last laugh. But I’m not laughing anymore because I think it rendered me dislexic because I can not only read upside down now, but in reverse letter shape order too. Great fun at parties.
Okay, wide circle, but here’s why I told you all that: if you can sign my name, mimic my signature and fool the world with the forgery after seeing how I write…pal, you have earned whatever it is you’re trying to steal lol.
Nevertheless, The Official Party Line is: “I am very disappointed in you, young man.” [but in about twenty years will laugh with you over beers about this, waytogoslugger lol and next time? get rid of the evidence.]
