Radio Ramblings: What parents do when kids go back to school
By Poncho Parker on August 22, 2019.
Forget about filling up the shopping cart with duotangs, whiteout and the 64-pack special of crayons with the built-in sharpener. Head down the party aisle of your favourite place to spend money and you’ll notice party hats, noisemakers, confetti guns and streamers are flying off the shelf faster than the mailing out of photo radar tickets. Forklifts are being maxed out to capacity as pallets of wobbly pops are shucked out of side doors into mini vans waiting in the wings. If you’re a student perusing this wondering exactly what activities mothers and fathers involve themselves with when you’re learning all about the Battle of Hastings (1066 AD by the way), your fears are correct; we party like it’s 1999.
Despite signing my confidentiality waiver when I turned 18 restricting me from discussing what parents do when kids return to class, I feel it’s time to let the younger generation know the “loose truth” and the months in between September and June. Between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. every weekday, parents are hosting keggers, barn burners, shakers and shindigs while spiking the punch with homemade hooch in celebration of students heading back to class. Cassette players are dusted off, mullets are resurrected and neighbourhood block parties are as common as the rising sun. As a parent, we want our youth to believe you’re smarter than we are because the moment you hop on that yellow bird you call a school bus we’re hosting pool parties, consuming barbecued beef on a bun by the pound and pushing our blenders to the limit in the search of the perfect margarita. While you continue to search for the final digit of pi in calculus, we’re eating pie, probably apple with three scoops of ice cream, and we call that breakfast. That’s usually followed up with an hour nap before second breakfast comes a calling and then we spend the rest of the morning either on the golf course or at the spa however it’s usually both. Our afternoons are spent sipping slurpees and lounging in our backyard pools before dismantling them each and every weekday but not before concocting a mass conspiracy theory about what to tell our kids upon their arrival home.
What a dream. Until such a utopia exists here’s a reminder that our future leaders of the world will once again be expanding their brains and we should take due diligence to expand our peripheral vision when entering those school zones and extra attention to the flashing lights of school buses. Let’s make sure our kids get home safe because it’s only a matter of time before we’ll need their skills to take our false teeth out of the glass.
And if you’ve got something on your mind, you can find Poncho weekday mornings on Medicine Hat’s Best Rock, 105.3 Rock. You can also track him down at 1053rock.ca or on Twitter @ponchoparker
