Mr. Somebody Needs A Slap

Our school district has the organizational skills of a dead squid.

Most send home information about school sports, and tell us important things like when practice starts, where it's held, if equipment is needed, and if a physical is needed.

Not our school district. Instead, they have a fancy-schmancy, new electronic dialer system that calls us at 3:00am with a recorded message anytime there's a school closing. Or it calls during dinner to tell us there's a bake sale on Friday.

Sports tryouts? PTA meetings? Nope. Nada. Nothing.

Instead, we rely on the teenager grapevine approach:

“Mooooom!” whines the teenager living in our household, “I need to get a physical by next week so I can play soccer.”

“I thought you were going to get all the information first, so we could talk about it,” I reminded her.

“But I just found out tryouts are next week!”

“Okay. So what time is soccer practice over?” I asked.

“I don't know,” says child.

“Is there a sports bus that takes the kids home afterwards?”

“I don't know.”

“Who is the coach? I'll just call him.”

“I don't know.”

“How do you know tryouts are next week?”

“My friends told me.”

“Who told them?”

“Somebody.”

“Okay, so Mr. Somebody came to them in a vision and told them of the impending tryouts? Really? You're not seriously telling me that no one knows when and where practice is, who the coach is, and how long it will be?”

Teenager stomps off.

Until recently, I had a very flexible work schedule. During that time, I encouraged my daughter to do sports or other extra curricular activity. She couldn't have been bothered.

Now that I have ZERO job flexibility, and work an hour away, playing school soccer has become a moral imperative.

So.

To sum up: My job stinks like an old gym sock, and now I've got a pissed off teenager too.

I really need to play the lottery more often.