All of you parents with elementary aged school children, be warned: by the time your kid reaches high school, make sure you have lots of money, power tools, and great neighbors.

My oldest son Tyler is a Junior, and in Physics this year.

Somehow I lucked out of Physics in both High School and College.

I do know if you drop a sock on the living room floor, it falls at the same rate of speed as the remote control and soda cans. And, no forces of gravity that don’t include my threatening voice result in much of anything moving. That’s the extent of my Physics knowledge.

Homework assignment: build a CATAPULT, from scratch, no kits allowed, that has to throw an object about the size of an egg, exactly 26 feet. And, said egg has to land in a small castle. Your major grade is based on how far the egg object falls from the castle-the further it misses the castle, the lower your grade.

Tyler was pretty well panicked last week. Robert was out working in the Gulf, and I can barely program a VCR. Every time my husband hollers from some broken pipe or gadget “GETTT MEEE AAA CRESCENNNTTT WREEENCCHHH,” I have to remind him that is about the equivalent of my screaming to him, “GRAB MY BRONZE EYE SHADOW AND BE SURE TO BRING MY EYE LINER WITH YOU!!!!!.” Ain’t happening.

Just when I thought my teenager was going to melt down at this project, my super neighbor e-mailed me and said he would be happy to help. I declined, but he insisted, and told me to have Tyler in the garage Saturday morning at 10 am. Tyler was overcome with relief. I told him he should be prepared to mow their lawn for a year.

Saturday morning arrived, and Tyler, my husband and neighbor were next door the entire day. I could hear the power saw and other tools all day. Finally, at about 5 pm, Tyler and my husband walked in the house looking like beat dogs, and said they were nearly done; Sunday would only require fine tuning and decoration.

Decoration? Right about then I remembered Tyler had a partner in this project.

I asked him where she was, and my apparently 17th century born son informed me that his partner did not need to be working around power tools because there was “too much of a chance she would mess it all up.”

‘SCUSE ME?

COME AGAIN?

I was stunned! Where did my mild mannered son come up with this very sexist notion?

“You are ALLOWING her to PAINT IT? Is THAT what you just said to me? And she OFFERED to come over and help?”

Tyler kind of mumbled something again about the potential of her “messing it up” and I thought, “I’m about to show you what messed up looks like, from a female perspective…”

I gave him a hearty lecture about the fact that she had every right to come over and operate those power tools and that he had no right to think that because she is a SHE, that operating power tools was out of her realm.

We have always had a very equal opportunity household. I work in HR for crying out loud. There ain’t no discrimination going on here. Unless you consider being a teenage pig pen a protected class, in which case we do discriminate. But men vs women? No siree.

They fine tuned (and decorated) the catapult on Sunday, Tyler beamed, his partner was impressed.

Tuesday, the big day, rolled around. Tyler said some kids showed up with catapults that were 6 feet tall and required two people to move. They snickered at Tyler and his partner’s tiny, 18 inch model. That lasted until Tyler flipped the lever and shot the egg further than anyone else.

Ultimately, he was a little nervous and the teacher gave them a 95 because they kept hitting the side of the castle and, and not going inside the walls. The fact that on Monday he shot the egg 26 feet and it hit a coke can, dead on, was irrelevant. He was proud of the 95, but irritated that he didn’t get a 100.

So…..today, they were in class, and the teacher made a comment about how well made their catapult was built. She noted that there was not a single nail in it, and mentioned keeping it as a sample for other classes.

Tyler’s FEMALE partner heard that, marched straight up to the teacher and said, “Give us a 100 on the project and you can keep the catapult.”

The teacher, without batting an eye, looked straight at Ms. I-cannot-operate-power-tools-because-my-partner-thinks-I-am-not-qualified, and said, “done.”

Take that Y chromosome and put it in your catapult, son.

Never underestimate the power of a woman.

Especially one offering to operate power tools.

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This week we had our first Middle School Football scrimmage for Thing 2 and Thing 3 at my house. Of course with my luck, they were on the same day, at opposite stadiums.

Decisions, decisions. 

There is only so much mom to go around, and the two stadiums were nowhere near each other.

Don’t the coaches think of these things when they are planning the football schedules? Why aren’t moms part of the planning process?

My first thought was to send Tyler to one game, (saying Hallelujah again to him having a drivers license,) and I would attend the other game. After all, Tyler has spent more time coaching his brothers in football than any other coach, he deserves front row, season tickets.

At the last minute though, a big storm cloud rolled in with a downpour, we changed plans and I had to make an executive decision.

Chase’s game was further away, it was Jordan’s first game ever, it was raining, I was sick, and Jordan was just flat closer. I let Chase scrimmage alone, and went to watch Jordan.

All things considered, Jordan did fairly well for his football debut, maybe there is a NFL career in his future after all? Okay, maybe not, but it’s good.

I’ve been concerned about him playing football for a number of reasons. He has Juvenile Arthritis. He has never really played any contact sport, unless you consider having a brother sit on your face and fart a contact sport. And I was sure those size 11.5 feet would either cause him to trip over himself, or permanently damage some other child.

He and our neighbor stayed in about 75% of the game though, much to my surprise.

Sure, his first few blocks looked more like, um, playground patty cake than football blocks.

And, you know, a couple of times, he sort of, well, ran in what looked like a circle from the stands but I am absolutely sure that was an actual play and he was doing that on purpose.

On another play, the kid guarding him went up to about Jordan’s knees (WITH the helmet on) and that’s exactly where he dove-straight for Jordan’s knees. It looked like we had suddenly switched from football to wrestling.

Jordan told me later that on that particular play, he looked down at this very small 7th grader giving it is all to hang on to Jordan’s knee caps and just said, ‘what are you doing?’

I think the coaches have totally missed Jordan’s football calling. If they just look down at some point, and see those flipper like feet, they will realize that maybe they have a star punter in the making?

In the end, he was uninjured, smelly, and tired. And really irritated when he got in the car and Tyler told him he had a lot to learn. I spent 30 minutes doing post-game damage control; Tyler’s opinion matters more him than the coach and he took the critical feedback hard.

Next week, the real fun starts. Two kids, two games per week, two nights, six more long weeks. Lots of dinners in bags, back and forth, late nights of homework and lots of cranky kids. Ahhh, the joys of football at this age.

I wonder if they have Wi-Fi at the Middle School stadiums?

And I need some stadium seats quickly.

A mom’s butt can only handle so much aluminum seating.

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Last night was the Middle School Open House.

I really did not want to go.  Ohmygoodnesssplease I could think of a million other things to do than run around the middle school from 7 to 9:30 pm on a weeknight.

I would have looked for a way out of it, except for one reason: Jordan.

He has always been obsessed with me attending Open House.

My sarcastic, class clown-the very child you would think would call in the National Guard to keep me from standing face to face with a teacher- is devastated if I don’t go.

I missed one when I was attending grad school a few year ago, and I sent my mom instead.

I’m still hearing about it today.

In fact Wednesday night, Jordan said, “You know mom, Open House is this week, but I am SURE you won’t go and you will send Nana instead.”

Jordan will be 40 years old and in therapy because I missed the Open House in 2007 when he was in 5th grade.

Middle School Open House, unlike Elementary School where you exchange pleasantries with the teacher and can make a bee-line for the door, involves actually following the child’s schedule, 15 minutes per class. No skipping. They even ring the bells. You sit in each class for 15 minutes, bell rings, dismissed, next class.

I kept asking Jordan, “and WHEN is study hall? What about lunch, do we get to do that?” He was not at all amused.

Here are the 3 things I learned during my Middle School session:

1.) Everyone is meant for some career, thank goodness my chosen profession was not to be a Middle School teacher. I love my kids. I even love some of their friends. But, I would rather discuss COBRA legislation for 8 hours than teach pre-teens all day. To all the Middle School teachers, thank you, I could never do that job without keeping a whiskey flask hidden in my desk drawer.

2.) I never realized how much kids look like their parents until I was in a room full of parents and mini-me’s. It reminded me of those news stories about how dogs and their owners look alike. Big, round dad, big round kid. String bean mom, string bean kid. Mom wearing more make up than Zsa Zsa Gabor, well, you get the picture.

3.) You find out all sorts of social things about your kids at Open House. Jordan and I passed Chase outside and Jordan, who never has to worry about being tortured by the CIA because all you do is look at him and say BOO! and he sings like a canary, whispered to me, “that’s his new girlfriend with him.” WHOA. I didn’t even know know he had a new girlfriend! I stopped short, nearly got myself half trampled to death by the other parents, and ran back to look out the window like the Mervyn’s lady, my face all smushed up to the glass, and tried to peek outside where they were to get a look at the new girl.

There were hand slaps in the hall, high fives, all kinds of kids trying to be ultra cool. It was too much. The hall passing was way more fun than listening to the teachers talk. Except some parent who seemed to have the same schedule as we did apparently decided to douse themselves in a 1970’s era musk cologne so every time we were in the hall, I thought for sure my grandfather was nearby.

Ultimately, I was glad I went.

I can now put names with faces when the teachers start calling for homework.

Every teacher now has my e-mail address, it’s okay, I’m ready.

And, most importantly, I now know my eighth grader is hooked up with a high school freshman.

Forget the teachers, I want the contact information for her parents.

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