First day flubs – yes, “flubs” is plural

As many of you know, Jack started Pre-K on Thursday. Where we live this is an all day, every day thing – just like grade school.

Jack was excited to attend a new school and he did great with me dropping him off and leaving him there with perfect strangers.

His problems started later in the day (probably around the time he started getting tired because he is use to sleeping until 9:30/10:oo in the morning).

At about the same time I published his letter, the phone rang. When I looked at the caller-id, it said it was the school. My initial thought was, “You have got to be kidding me. It is the first day and I can’t believe they are ALREADY having to call me.”

On the other end of the line was indeed Jack’s teacher. Luckily the call was not to inform me that he had misbehaved but rather to ask me to bring him some extra shorts and underwear because apparently when he was “peeing standing up” he accidentally dribbled on himself.

So, I woke Beau up from a nap in which he had just fallen asleep, and I headed to the school with new shorts and underwear in hand. Because we live in a small town, everyone knows not only your name, but your business as well. So it should come as no surprise that as soon as I walked in the door, the receptionist said Jack was in his classroom and I could head on back.

The door to the classroom was open so I stuck my head in. The kids were getting ready for naptime, but the primary teacher and Jack were missing. The teacher’s aid quickly informed me that they were probably still in the bathroom and so I turned around and started to head back in the opposite direction.

At about the same time, Jack’s teacher comes more-or-less running down the hallway and says in a rather frantic voice, “Don’t panic, we’re looking for him now.”

HUH?

My little Jack was missing. They thought he was still in the bathroom, but could not find him. Teachers, teacher aids, administrators and secretaries were all frantically roaming the hall in search for my “lost” son.

Amazingly, I remained calm. Maybe that makes me a bad mom. Maybe I should have been panicked or  at least worried…but I knew my son and I knew he was fine – he was either lost, or hiding (if it was the latter, I would kill him later).

After minutes of searching, the receptionist sent out an “All Call” over the school intercom. It was at this point I started to feel a little antsy; again, not because I was worried about him but because I was worried that once his name went “Public” he would have to live with it for the rest of his life and we, his parents, living in a small town, would have to hear about it forever.

Because God is good and did not want us to suffer from that type of humiliation, at the exact same moment the receptionist was about to mention Jack’s name, someone yelled out, “We found him!”

Apparently Jack was in his classroom the entire time, hiding in a tent with a bunch of other kids. Although I had previously thought I would kill him if he was hiding, I  couldn’t fault him for being where he was supposed to be.

Now all I can think is, “His poor teacher…what a way to start off the school year, knowing that you have lost someone’s kid and now knowing that she has to put up with him for the rest of the year.”