Back to School

My summer of Zachery is over. Last week, Zack went back to school.

It was with mixed emotions that I sent him back. Having him home for the entire summer with me (due to my current employment (or rather lack thereof) situation) has had both good points and bad. On the whole the good points far outweigh the bad....Though at times another day of endless "Daddy! Daddy! DADDEEE!!!" might have driven me totally, stark-raving mad, the close relationship we've always had has deepened over the summer. That more than outwieghs the potential derangement..

At the school, Zachery was nervous, but willing, as we trekked up the steps. He impressed me by not crying or acting scared, just a quiet, whispered confession that he was nervous. He refused to let me walk him all the way up to his classroom, very conscious of the fact that he was not, as he put it, "a baby". Off he trudged.

I picked him up promptly at 3:30, but generally got nowhere quizzing him about his day. He is always very close-mouthed about school when he first leaves it. It takes a concerted and careful questioning and lead-in to get him to break-down and tell me some of the details about what he spent his day doing and what he learned.

My usual fruitless quizzing efforts ran into a few additional difficulties when we entered the car. As I was strapping him in, a large wasp accidently buzzed in through the open door. Zack hates bugs at the best of times, so he immediately began trying to shrink away into the corner of the car. The wasp, focussed intently on battering its way through the rear window, paid no attention, but was starting to get too close for comfort. I could see the anxiety on Zack's face when the wasp buzzed past a second time. I popped his seatbelt free and told him to get out of the car and stand on the sidewalk. He clambered out, pratically levitating over the front seat and out the door, while I glanced quickly around looking for something to swat the wasp with. Now normally the backseat area of our car is, for lack of a better description, a bit of a disaster area. There is almost always an old cataloge or comic book sitting back there, left-over detritus of the weekend's errands, shopping and Zachery but, naturally enough, my wife had cleaned the back seat the day before, leaving me with no anti-bug weapons readily at hand.

I pulled off my old, battered Detroit Tigers hat and gently tried to shoo the wasp in the direction of the open door. The reluctant wasp, deftly avoiding my hat, decided instead to attack. It began to sting my hat, at which point I decided the gloves were off and began smacking the wasp viciously with the hat. Zack, standing on the sidewalk, was bobbing up and down anxiously, watching me flail madly around the car, trying to corner the wasp.

It was, with the timing that fate reserves for Dads everywhere, that the little old grey-haired lady drove slowly past, gaping out the window, with Zachery alternately flinching and bobbing on the sidewalk, while within the car a grown man began whipping a baseball hat violently at the window in the back seat of a parked car, screaming "Die already you rat-bastard!".

I'm sure it gave her something to think about.

The wasp finally left of its own accord, with a disgusted look in my direction I'll warrant ("Call that a swat? I'll show you a swat..."). Zack was duly impressed at my titantic battle against the wasp and grinned madly all the way home.

And then, completely of his own accord, he told me about his first day at school.

Comments are always welcome. You can post them below. You can reach me at dadchronicles(at)hotmail.com.