I #$%#$%@ meetings

Meetings. Have you ever noticed that school meetings are mostly hours of sitting there going through photocopied sheets of information? Can someone please enlighten me as to the necessity of this tortuous process? WHY? I ask you, WHY? Why can’t we just email our questions like civilised human beings and save ourselves from four hour long rendez-vous(es?) where nothing is learned or decided?
Yep. The school year has started and once again we are subjected to class meetings. Although I applaud the sentiment behind these arduous information sessions, as you can probably imagine, I question the necessity of them. Having your head crammed with the curriculum for the semester as well as all the “homework” we have as parents does not seem fruitful. Most of us in the class can read the handouts. I am sure we can figure most of this out ourselves, and if we have any questions, go to the teacher on our own time. Yes, it is good to meet the other parents. Yes, it is necessary to see what your kid is doing. But why do we have to do it all together and listen to other parents’ kvetching? Is this what it means to be an adult? Because it truly sucks. And it makes me turn into a petulant child who snaps at the least comment and the minute the meeting is over I am the first one out the door. And it is just like being in school again. I hated school, and now I have to relive it. (Visualize me on the kitchen floor stamping my feet and swinging my fists)
And another thing. It is not just the drudgery of sitting in a hot classroom on uncomfortable chairs being talked at that resembles school. The small little microcosm, the little ecosystem that is engendered by sticking kids of the same age in one room echoes onto the parents. I was standing in the schoolyard the other day, for once early. My kids had already run off and I was left there to wait for the bell to ring. All the other parents were talking and chatting as if they knew each other for ages and I just stood there alone trying to figure out how to approach them. I tried to attach myself to two parents that I know slightly and that happen to be anglophone, but I just ended up standing there at the edge of their conversation as if someone had tried to tack on an extra arm to an already whole body. I spent the rest of the day thinking about how I am the loser parent and wondering about the psychological consequences of this reality on my children. And the comparing! It seems that I alone cannot manage to have kids, a fabulous job and look stylish, slim and successful at 8:00 in the morning in a schoolyard. I try to fake it by walking purposefully and carrying a lot of bags to hide the stains on the skirt I haver worn all summer, but somehow I don’t think anybody is fooled. I try to tell myself that I don’t want to be like them, that it is not important to me, blah, blah, blah, which is true, but also convenient as I am unable to reach that level of perfect parent/career/ school involvement/fabulous clothes/my child eats only healthy snacks beingness. School is stressing me out in the way it stressed me out when I was ten. I need a drink and it is only 7 in the morning.