Parent Teacher Conference Totals

Out of my 103 students, I talked to 6 parents. There's some great parental devotion! Of course, the 6 parents I talked to were the ones I didn't need to talk to because their kids are good kids (yes, I do have some good kids) and are working hard to graduate from my class. Oh well, the ones I did need to talk to would tell me that their kids' problems are all my fault, or the school's fault, or last year's teacher's fault, or my personal favorite, their ex wife/husband's fault. I love the faulty gene pool rationale! But, having seen some of the exes, I generally have to agree. Here's a loveley scene from the city park I witnessed last Wednesday:

One of my students was at the park with his father. Dad had a long, long mullet, ala Achy Breaky Heart Billy Ray Cyrus circa 1992. Dad's clothing consisted of jeans that were shredded, (not because they can't afford them but because he still thinks the acid washed, shredded at the knees look is still "bitchin")and a wife beater. When I drove by, he was sitting on a bench, drinking a beer with the remaining six pack sitting beside him, eyeing the high school/middle school girls walking past while his kid was throwing rocks at the ducks in the pond. He returned reply note saying he couldn't come to parent teacher conferences that afternoon because he had to meet with his parole officer that afternoon and then his son had to meet with his (the son's) parole officer after that and he just couldn't make it to conferences. What he was doing the other 4 days is anybody's guess.

I'm not the only one who had fun at conferences. One of our parents showed up in her nightgown for conferences. This is not the kind of hot mom you want to see in her nightgown. She weighs approximately 450 lbs. is a chain smoker who smells like a stale ashtray, and I'm thinking she hasn't showered or shaved in quite a while. Now imagine that in a sheer, stained nightgown. In the words of Ron White, "Things that make you go buhhhh!" Another parent showed up with cans on their hands painted black with orange jack-o-lanterns on them and wouldn't take them off to shake the teacher's hands. A particularly crazed mom accused one of our teachers of "peeking through the crack in the bathroom stall at her son" even though the teacher is a female and to my knowledge sends in our principal to check on her male students when things get crazy in the bathrooms. And the winner in this year's annual Parent Teacher Conferences (aka Parade of Freaks) is the mom who showed up in a ripped up t-shirt, with no bra on, and one of the rips was right in the nipple area, so the teachers she talked to were given their own peep show. One of them likened it to the scene in the last Austin Powers movie where Fred Savage played the "mole" and had a very noticeable mole on his face. No one could look away from the mole and apparently, no one could look away from the nipple! I'm not making this stuff up and in the world of teaching, reality is WAY stranger than fiction!