Dear SmallMonkey has the half-empty gene direct from my control panel, and his WorstCaseScenarios (WCSs) are quite astounding. It’s the end of the summer hols and tucking-up time earlier tonight was fraught with hazards forecast for the week to come:
• Playground bullies would jump out of lockers and wrestle small children to the ground
• The new teachers would pick kids out to stand on the desks and recite nonsense
• The Haze would infiltrate the lungs of half the class, who would then be rushed to hospital by very slow ambulance driven in fact by a scary clown
• The bus driver on his return journey would not collect SM from school
OK so I might have made up points 2 and 3, but we discussed the very real last point at length, especially as it was a new fear that hadn’t been voiced all summer, and mostly because the possibilities for disaster, according to SM, were endless. We agreed he could pack his [non-working] phone so that he could text or WhatsApp me if the worst really did happen.
“Where should I wait if they forget me?”
“At Junior Reception. But it won’t happen.”
“What will I say?”
“That the stinking bus has driven off without you. But that won’t happen.”
“Which Reception again?”
“You’ve been doing this for three years. It won’t happen.”
“But if it does you can get to me in, what, 15 minutes, can’t you?”
A little bit longer, actually, but he really didn’t need to know that.
If only I had enjoyed school more myself I could have painted lively pictures across that dark bedroom of the promise of playful and enthusiastic lessons the next day, of fun on the rugby pitch and hilarity in the lunch hall. Instead I played a slow and calm card, discussing favourite dinner options for after school and spending time attaching a funky new Boba Fett Lego keyring to the dreaded packed schoolbag, itself freshly locked and loaded for the numerous missions of the brand new term.
This time last year – when SM was a brand new student heading off to what was then a brand new school – I went bonkers in the kitchen and learnt how to make macaroons. Tomorrow I’ll have the office as my distraction, but I will be very early to that bus stop at 4.05pm, and my phone will be on and turned up loud all day.
