Summer Weekend

Carnival at the Alameda County Fair

They say you can never go home again.

     It's 10 o'clock and I have yet to call the administrator at my child's school and tell them that she isn't coming. What reason will I come up with? It's only polite, in these situations, to lie, isn't it? Even if you know it's a lie and they know it's a lie. Just as I pick up the phone though, my daughter sees me reach for it.

     "Who are you calling?" she demands.

     "Mr. Smith."

     "So you can make up a story?"

     I look at her with those big brown, wooden eyes trained to mine.

     "No," I said. "I'm not making up a story."

     Mr. Smith is the kind of guy you see out in front of his house washing his car so he can keep an eye on the nighborhood. Short, squat, with baggy eyes that seem to droop when he speaks, he seems in a permanent state of discomfort or confusion. Perhaps one feeds into the other. He would seem at home on the cover of a Beatrix Potter tale, with the transmogrification into a toad complete.

     "Anna's not coming today," I said when I had him on the phone, but did not offer an excuse.

     There was an audible silence on the line.

     "I wanted to discuss something with you, while I have you on the line." I hear a slurp which I am sure is not a bug being eaten mid-conversation.

     "What is it?" I said, already knowing I had set myself up to be abused.

     "Does your daughter cut paper at home?"

     "Excuse me?" I said honestly.

     "Because we've been having problems with your daughter leaving pieces of cut paper all over."

     They'd never heard of a broom somehow! Fascinating! New! But of course I couldn't marvel at this fact.

     "I'm still not sure I understand."

     "Well, Anna is leaving pieces of paper everywhere and it is turning into quite a nuisance." (I kid you not! His exact words!)

     "I know she and her friend--"

     "The teachers saw it was your daughter."

     "Nevertheless, you are welcome to monitor her paper cutting while she is there, and you have my permission to tell her not to do that when she is there with you. But as far as with me? No. I have not seen her do that with me."

     "Okay," he says and hangs up.

     I look at the phone in my hand. In these situations, it is only polite to lie.

Pink Foam Finger: $7.99 plus tax.

     The reason my daughter and I were playing hookey from school was to go to an Oakland A's game. The tickets are only $5 and I love day games. I took the day off and did not consider that my daughter would have to be taken out of school, nor that my daughter's school would feel something about it. But it sounded like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride had it in for my daughter already. The question was why.     But I refused to consider it, because the whole point of going out to Oakland was to be free of care.     We did a pretty good job, me and my daughter.     The home team went down 11-0 early, but thanks to a six-run eighth they turned the game into a respectable 12-9 showing. The good news was, I felt great coming out of the ballpark and really all the way until I got home.     Cut to Saturday. I got off pretty early and my wife and I made plans to go to the Alameda County Fair. I hadn't been since I was 16, my wife in at least ten years. We had an idea that it related to fun but distant memories.     My daughter was sold and we drove out to Pleasanton.     We got out of the car and the heat hit us for a second, but a pleasant breeze came through the valley. We walked toward the entrance when I looked over at the other side of the road and saw what looked like the janitor at my daughter's school. I watched her walk for some steps but decided it couldn't be.     We went inside and went straight to the ferris wheel. Then to cotton candy. Corn dog. Magic show. Bunnies. Water. We had so much trouble all of a sudden finding water.     I found a water fountain but the water wasn't so good. Beat nothing, though.     Just then, the shadows overtook the sun. We found the kid's area at last and my daughter did the kiddie rides. We should have bought her a wristband but then we wouldn't have had an excuse to depart.     We sat and watched an awful 80s band rekindle their lack of magic, before deciding we needed to eat again.     At the BBQ shack, I turned and saw a teacher from the other preschool class opposite my daughter and the janitor I had suspected seeing before. All the way from San Francisco!     "Always with the tissues!" the janitor said. 

     Paper again! What was it with these people and my daughter's use of paper!
     We went back to the kiddie ride area and there, with his two boys was the toad himself, Mr. Smith, waddling to and fro in a lather over some skeight, perceived or real, his boys had dealt him. 
     "I know you," I said simply, and made him shake my hand.
     "My niece said she saw you," he said.
     His niece! All along, it was his niece! The janitor was the school administrator's niece. That is what made some cut paper my daughter left the cause du jour of the school's administrator, so much so that our fun had to be stopped, not once, but twice!
     I suggest, in life, that all people learn to use a broom. See, you use the broom to sweep things up that are on the floor. In the case of little pieces of paper on the floor, it is truly indispensable. See, because if you don't, or if you think you're better than usong it, you're going to give people the impression that you're out of your mind. And you just might convince someone to overstep their authority in service of your madness.
     Believe it or not, this would be a bad thing, though I'm still not noticing any shame has resulted from any of it.