Open house night.....same as it ever was.......

High school never ends.

It doesn’t end with graduation.

It doesn’t end in the back seat of a ’71 Mustang, or the beach in Malibu, or even with the start of college, boot camp, or even cosmetology school.

Is just continues, and comes back to you at times. Sometimes it’s inopportune. Sometimes you know it’s coming, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Like you’re a deer in the headlights.

Back to school night fits that category when you have a child in high school, and of course make the obligatory annual pilgrimage to smile on the teachers so they treat your child like the prodigy you believe ‘the one’ to be.

You get all types at back to school night. The hard working dad, still in his suit on a late summer night. The workout addicted mom with the great arms and probably killer abs, who’s trying to figure out what to do about the lines in her face. The PTA moms who live through their kids. The parents taking a second or third free beverage, just because it’s there. The moms with the bad dye jobs. (would it have killed you to spend another 30 seconds on the side of your head, in front of the ears. You, yes you, the women I sat next to in the gym!) The kids dying for the community service hours willing to prostitute themselves for this club or that school activity just to be involved. The football players selling tickets to who knows what because they’re too cool to have a pitch down that works, and don’t they realize football is no longer the fall sport in this part of the east coast, anyhow?

There’s the teacher who used to be a party planner, still using balloons as the background of her powerpoint. And the science teacher who was so unintelligible, no one was able to ask him a question at the end of his presentation, as no one had a clue to what he just said. (I do have a great deal of sympathy for my kid in this class)

And then there's the gym teachers. They fit every stereotype. And then they add this to the mix. They take themselves seriously. They talk about posting the curriculum online. They talk about tests. They talk about the course. It's fucking gym. You either get hit by the dodgeball, or you catch the dodgeball. Has gym changed that much? Not by the look of the teachers, legs spread, standing as tall as they can, hands behind their back, looking trimmer than the other teachers, but probably thanks to the Under Armour gear more than any regular form of exercise. For the umpteenth time, Woody Allen was right when he said those who can't teach, teach gym.

But then it’s also about the wonderfulness of a community wealthy enough to put a promethium board in every classroom. But, still, has to tape a handwritten note alongside each board warning that it’s not to be written on with markers or other pens or inks!

Another type is the cautious and caring teacher, the one who warns parents about the problems at this school. Drugs? Sex? Pregnancy? Truancy? No, the silent agent this fall, H1N1, and the perennial favorite in these parts, the overindulgent parent who provides their child with the excuse necessary to stay out of school on exam day. This, it appears, is the big problem in our community. And it certainly speaks to the overindulgence of the parent, the coddling of the child, and the disdain it shows for both educators and the process of teaching and learning. I suspect it will continue to go on, as we know that every angle will be taken to get Missy into Yale and Skippy into Brown.
And then the evening ends, after you’re offered cookies and brownies and drinks and memberships and clubs and galas and trips and who knows what. You walk out into the preternaturally cool late summer evening, into what at first seems to be a nice, refreshing, open space. Then, right in front of you is a reminder of the way the kids are treated. Of what they have to deal with each day. Three very large security guards, evident to all by their embroidered shirts with ‘MCPS Security’ over the left breast on their XXXL buttondowns, arguing either with one another, or with a parent, over some sort of transgression.

There is no calm in high school. There is probably very little reason. There’s a lot of emotion, a decent amount of pheromones, way too much sweat, and a false sense of being in the universe. But not to worry. It doesn’t end. And by the look of it. Many people spend many years trying to get it right. Even if they don’t follow the rule, if you wore it back in high school, it’s more than likely not appropriate to wear now.

Now, where’s that Mustang.