The Breakfast Club
“Dad….I’ve got something to tell you and you’re probably going to be mad.”
“Oh, I don’t know Zoë. When you put it to me like that.”
“Did my teacher call you?”
“Oh Lord, Zoë. No, she didn’t What is it this time?”
“I got detention.”
“For what??!!”
“Not doing my homework.”
I suppose I should stop the recounting of our conversation here. Zoë does her homework. Daily. We have a homework routine that would rival many Harvard scholars. I credit my wife here for if it were left to me, the kids would wile away the afternoon hours idly playing in mud puddles, counting clouds and throwing rocks into the river.
As it is, we spend the time more productively with our studies: reading, mathematics, geography, spelling….you know–school stuff. To that mix there are a couple of study books in which Zoë is to complete daily lessons. Her only task is to make sure she brings the books home each night so that she can complete the lessons and return them to school the next morning to be checked.
Zoë has yet to embrace the significance of her daily shuttle missions and on more than one occasion forgotten the books at school. According to her detention slip–4 times. Seems her teacher was counting. (I know. It really seems pretty benign but there are rules…..sigh)
So my little girl, my trail blazer, my rebel is scheduled to serve her first detention. (Notice I said first. There will be more–of this I feel certain.) True to form, though, detention is just one more check on Zoë’s Great List of Adventures.
She was busy yesterday evening making wardrobe plans for the next dress down day. I told her that maybe she shouldn’t be so hasty there as if she recalls she had just informed me she was serving detention. Maybe there should be some consequences to that.
“But, Dad,” she said smiling, almost giddy. “There’s not. I just get to sit with the teachers for a while after school!”
