That Motherf***ing School

“Lou! How was your day?” I called to the backseat as I accelerated onto Ward Parkway. 

“Great!” he said. He’s always enthusiastic after school. Actually I think he’s the only kid who ever really shared about his day at this age.

Well, that’s not totally true. Nate always shared some fabricated drama. Some feud in his class with a series of other boys that it sounded like he instigated. 

But Lou tells me who he played with, what they played, what they had for snack, who was mean, who made him laugh, and what they did on the playground.

Only that day, a very rainy day with periodic downpours, they didn’t go out on the playground.

“We had to go down to the bike room,” he reported. Which is the big open activity room in the basement that they use to get the wiggles out during the day. Especially on rainy days or snowy days. 

“…that motherfucking school.”

“Uh, what?”

I thought for sure I’d misunderstood him.

“That motherfucking school!”

I nearly swerved into the cars racing down Ward Parkway on either side of me.

“Lou!” But I didn’t even have a response.

Officially, my stance on toddler profanity is to ignore it, not to reward it with attention.

But that was with words like “crap” or “damn.”

Motherfucking was another level.

So I had to address it. Somehow.

“Uh, Lou,” I was fumbling, “that’s not really a nice word.”

He chuckled, seemingly pleased with himself, as he looked out the window. “I know.”

And we left it at that. But little did I know that the magnitude of Motherfucking may have been intentional. He was, as it turns out, done with that school.

The next morning Lou’s teacher and I were standing in the parking lot behind his school. In the rain. Not a downpour like the day before, just a steady, foggy mist. It was cold, but not too cold. It was a few minutes after 9am, and the gloomy weather was supposed to hold steady all day.

I wasn’t that concerned about the weather in that moment, I just wanted to move on with my day. I had a to-do list. Emails to return. Social media ads to craft. Errands to run. Bananas to buy.

The morning dropoff operation at Lou’s school takes place in front of the school.

But again, we were in the back of the school.

Out of the way. Out of sight. 

The morning had started off just fine. Lou’s almost always excited to get to school and see his teachers and friends. It’s his second year in that particular classroom, so he’s formed a tight bond with those two teachers. And he has two best girlfriends in that class who he talks about all the time. The pictures they send home to parents confirm this tight knit threesome—they’re together in almost every picture.

And he’s learned a lot this year. He comes home talking about the solar system and animal classifications. He’s wrong sometimes—flowers are not mammals—but still, the academic stimulation is there. Ivy league, here he comes.

And sure, every once in a while, he hesitates when a different teacher, not one of his two faves, comes to fetch him from the car at dropoff. A little stranger danger is a good thing. Self-preservation is key to survival in this pre-apocalyptic world. But usually, with a little coercion, he goes with that teacher.

So I was surprised that rainy Wednesday morning when an unfamiliar teacher opened the car door, greeted him by name, and he shrieked “no!” and retreated to the third row of seats. Out of reach. 

“Lou, come on!” I said, trying to coax him back up towards the front from my spot in the driver’s seat. “She’ll take you to your classroom!”

“No!” Tears were streaming down his face, which was red with anger. Or fear. I’m not sure which.

The well-meaning teacher took a glance at the cars backing up behind us and, defeated, put his backpack back on the floor of my car. I’m not calling her a quitter, I think she was just aiming for efficiency. 

“I’ll get one of his classroom teachers,” she said, shutting the door. 

“Ok,” I said. “I’ll pull up a little farther.” 

I pulled up the two car lengths ahead of me until I was positioned at the first orange cone as cars behind me steered around us.

After a minute or two of me trying to calm Lou’s tears, the preschool director came out, but as soon as she opened the door, his shrieking resumed. 

“Nooooo!”

“Hi,” I said, offering a warm smile so she didn’t penalize me with a tuition hike. “I don’t know what happened. He was in a great mood a minute ago.”

Since I’d already abandoned any shreds of self-respect—you know, around the time Nate was born and I first became a mom—I awkwardly climbed over the center console and to the backseat. Feeling around for the button to lower the seat, allowing greater access to the third row, I pressed it, fully exposing Lou, who had ducked down to hide. Though, really, his screams were pretty conclusive as to his location.

“That’s okay, maybe he’s just having a morning. I’ll get one of his teachers.”

She grabbed his bag, shut the door, and returned to the main entrance, where a constant stream of teachers was coming out, taking a small child by the hand and leading them into the building.

“Lou,” I called to him gently, though he was already losing it, so I don’t know why I was being so delicate. I guess I was just hopeful that he’d suddenly perk up, hop out of the car, and trot into the building.

“We’re kind of in the way here. The people behind us want to leave.”

“I want to go HOME!”

Yeah, I get it, I thought to myself. I want to go home, too. Just not with you. As usual with Lou and all my kids in this threenager phase, I felt so helpless. 

Suddenly, his teacher, one of his favorites, popped into view and I sighed with relief. Surely, he’ll go with her, he loves her, I thought. 

But, the third time is apparently not the charm because as soon as she opened the door, he screamed again, “No! I want to go home!”

“Lou, where’s your smile?” she asked sweetly.

I was going through my mental checklist of possible ailments. He’s not sick. He slept well. He ate a pretty good breakfast. He pooped. Hmm… was it just that initial unfamiliar teacher that set him off?

His teacher looked to me, desperate. And probably confused about his uncharacteristic rage.

I don’t know, my expression seemed to tell her. Or that’s what I was trying to say, anyway. 

I looked up at the swarm of teachers standing by the front door. They were all looking towards our car, waiting for us to move out of the way so they could fetch the next batch of kids. And all the parents, babysitters, and grandparents behind us were probably feeling the same frustration, the same eagerness to get on with their days. To get to the store, to get to work, to get to whatever they had planned that didn’t include preschoolers. 

We were inconvenient to say the least. 

“How about if I pull around back?” I suggested, grasping at straws.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” his teacher confirmed. In other words, get out of the way.

I didn’t even bother to have him put a seatbelt on as I pulled around to the back parking lot, alleviating the logjam of cars behind me, Lou still screaming from the third row. 

“Lou, let’s talk. What’s going on?”

“I just want to go home!”

“Why? We actually can’t go home right now. No one’s even there, except Barbara [our cleaning lady]. Tighe’s at the gym, the big kids are at school, and I have to go do some work.”

I would repeat essentially that same statement about ten more times in the next twenty minutes or so.

In a few moments, I looked up to see his other teacher who had come out to help. Her arms were outstretched and she wore a huge, optimistic smile. 

“Lou!” she called. 

Thank God, I thought. He loves her. 

But I was wrong again.

“I WANT TO GO HOME!”

I stepped out of the car to chat, to fill her in on his tantrum.

“He was in a great mood and then one of the other teachers came to help him out of the car  and he just lost it.”

“Hmm, okay,” she said, nodding. “Maybe we’ll make it a policy that only one of the two of us can get Lou from the car. The other teachers should just leave him be.”

“Well, maybe, but he should be able to adjust to other adults if needed.”

We talked a few more minutes and, since his sobs had not ceased or even lessened, she returned to the warmth of the indoors and I told her I’d text her when he’s ready. If nothing else, I had to get his backpack back since they’d already taken it from us.

Eventually, I was ready to bribe him.

“How about some Paw Patrol when you get home this afternoon? Or go to your favorite playground after school? Or maybe both?”

I’d promise Disney World at this point if it got him in the door of that building!

Not sure he knows what Disney is, though…

Fortunately, I didn’t need to introduce him to that overly commercialized hell hole because all of the sudden, he said “okay!,” wiped his tears from his cheeks, and hopped down from the car. 

“Great!” I said, texting his teacher that “he’s ready!”

But apparently he misunderstood me because as soon as she appeared on the sidewalk again, he restarted the screams and the sobs. 

Come on.

She went back inside and I promised her another text update in a few minutes. 

I can’t remember what we talked about, Lou and I, but somehow he calmed down and we walked towards the door and waited for his teacher to return.

“I don’t know why I was sad,” he said looking up at me in his vinyl yellow raincoat. 

“I don’t either,” I replied, squeezing his little hand. And I don’t know why, but that statement broke my heart. 

“You go in with your teacher and I’ll pick you up after lunch and after your nap. Like I always do.”

“Okay!” And as soon as the big green door opened, he ducked under her arm and darted into the building.

Less than twenty minutes later, I got a text from his teacher with a picture of a very smiley Lou. 

“He’s a happy guy,!” she had written.

I wasn’t worried, of course, but it was still nice to know that he had recovered. That he had resumed his natural state of “an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.” Which is the mantra Tighe recites to the kids every morning before school.

When I picked him up that afternoon, he was happy again. In a great mood. Ready to go to the playground. Or watch Paw Patrol until his siblings get home. And so his refusal to get out of the car and go to school that morning was just a mystery. 

“He’s just three,” his teacher concluded.

He sure is. 

I’m so grateful for his teachers’ patience and compassion that morning… at that motherfucking school.