In roughly four weeks Pinky will see the end of a very long and arduous era… the end of school days.
Padraic and Lulu, my youngest two progeny will be chucking their well-worn, mildewed school bags in the wheelie bin and graduating from Year Twelve.
Hip hip hoo-bloody-ray!
Five kids in the educational system, for thirteen years each, adds up to an impressive SIXTY-FIVE years of running our lives in accordance with the frenetic bedlam of educational mandates.
Today, while perusing the students’ book lists we teachers are readying to hand out to parents for 2014, the magnitude of putting five kids through school hit home.
Over 65 years of 200 days attendance I made approximately 13 000 school lunches. That’s a hell of a lot of ham slices, bananas, roll-ups and juice poppers.
Assuming there were about ten permission notes sent home each year I must have signed about 600 all up (although most of Hagar’s were most likely left to party in the bottom of his bag with the neglected and highly compressed lunches I’d so lovingly created).
If I’d had any nous I should have bought shares in B.P. in 1994 (when Thaddeus began pre-school) as I estimate I performed at least 20 000 pick-ups and drop-offs…
(they went to different high schools complicating things even further).
In their early school years head lice eradication occurred at least twice a year so I can confidently conjecture I murdered at least 2400 innocent head lice (if you consider the average infestation consists of 15 of the little critters).
I bought in the region of 960 pencils, 240 erasers, 1920 colouring in pencils, 80 sharpeners, 80 pairs of scissors, 80 rulers, 240 glue sticks and 600 exercise books; and that’s only counting primary school.
Can you imagine covering 600 books with contact, tangling myself up in the bastard sticky plastic and crying about the ubiquitous, unavoidable bubbles? Only one of the reasons I drink too much.
I probably only attended 100 parent teacher interviews as I slackened off in the later years figuring that the further Pinky stayed away from the teachers, the less they’d develop a disliking for my kids.
Washing 13 000 smelly, paint-stained school uniforms to be worn the next day was one of the less pleasurable activities I can recall over the years.
Add to that; speech nights, concerts, homework, sport carnivals, swimming carnivals, debate clubs, etc, etc,etc.
“Aren’t you sad those days are coming to an end?” someone asked me the other day when I skipped merrily into the staffroom singing, “Five weeks to go! Five weeks to go! Hey Ho the Dairy-O! Five weeks to go!”My answer to the concerned citizen?…. “NO.”
In their early school years head lice eradication occurred at least twice a year so I can confidently conjecture I murdered at least 2400 innocent head lice (if you consider the average infestation consists of 15 of the little critters).
I bought in the region of 960 pencils, 240 erasers, 1920 colouring in pencils, 80 sharpeners, 80 pairs of scissors, 80 rulers, 240 glue sticks and 600 exercise books; and that’s only counting primary school.
Can you imagine covering 600 books with contact, tangling myself up in the bastard sticky plastic and crying about the ubiquitous, unavoidable bubbles? Only one of the reasons I drink too much.
I probably only attended 100 parent teacher interviews as I slackened off in the later years figuring that the further Pinky stayed away from the teachers, the less they’d develop a disliking for my kids.
Washing 13 000 smelly, paint-stained school uniforms to be worn the next day was one of the less pleasurable activities I can recall over the years.
Add to that; speech nights, concerts, homework, sport carnivals, swimming carnivals, debate clubs, etc, etc,etc.
“Aren’t you sad those days are coming to an end?” someone asked me the other day when I skipped merrily into the staffroom singing, “Five weeks to go! Five weeks to go! Hey Ho the Dairy-O! Five weeks to go!”My answer to the concerned citizen?…. “NO.”
In fact I'm buying the t-shirt.
