Have you seen this? According to my 15-year-old, I’m an all-powerful, evil villain who is personally responsible for all the woes of Bearden High School’s Color Guard. Students in Color Guard get a credit on their high school transcript. Since they are on block schedule, the class is about 25% of their regular school day. I have this silly idea that regular school hours are for learning and the absence of a teacher or ANY adult supervision during that time is neglect on the school’s part. I’m old fashioned that way. So, after several weeks of waiting for the school to find someone to supervise the Color Guard during school hours, Sarah came home with blood on her face and shirt. The injury was harmless and one of those freaky things that only happen to our family, but I wasn’t going to wait for something serious to happen. I sent the new principal an e-mail.

The principal replied within minutes from his handy-dandy BlackBerry. “I understand your concern. I will remedy the problem.” Awesome. I waited a few days to hear a reaction from Sarah. Finally, I asked if anything was different during 4th period. Sarah’s eyes rolled back in her head as it spun around in slow motion. Laser beams shot out of her eyes and fire came out of her mouth as she spoke. “The teacher is really mad. She said that someone’s parent called the school to complain. Now we have a babysitter. I know it was you who complained.” I processed the lava that my teen spat upon me. The teacher blamed the students and pitted them against each other because I sent one e-mail. I offered to call and talk to the teacher. Sarah’s head exploded. I told her I would back off. For now.

So, the Color Guard are now eating their own and half of them can’t learn the routine, because of me. I want to try and fix this problem of my own making. Maybe if I send an e-mail . . .

After years of me calling Evan feral, Missy labeled Evan free-range. This year, the free-range boy starts getting saddle broke. He has to learn the difficult task of organized playtime aka preschool. Sounds simple enough. Yet, we still started out with bucking and braying. After days of talking about how much fun preschool is, Evan decided he didn’t want anything to do with preschool. I chased him all over the house, trying to wrestle him out of jammies and into clothes while Evan talked like Max. “No school. No clothes. No car.” When that didn’t work for him, he tried being sweet. “Mommy, I rock you lap.” Sorry, no snuggle time right now. I lost the battle of shoes over boots and Doug carried a very sad boy to the car. Maybe Evan was embarrassed to go to school with the backpack that Sarah used in Kindergarten. “Mu-therr, are you really making him use that old purple backpack?” Perhaps Evan didn’t like his lunchbox being a freebie from a trade show. Is it possible that his mother and father’s combined bad hair genes making Evan look like Gene Wilder caused him to be a little self conscious? I think it was just a little too early in the morning for Evan.

When I went in to pick Evan up after lunch, he looked at me, squinted and growled, “I no go with you. I busy.” It took 15 minutes to convince Evan that it was time to go home. The next morning, Evan was dressed and demanding school before I was even awake enough to open my eyes. He had one small problem. Evan removed his homework assignment from his sister’s old purple backpack and deliberately peed on the homework. I don’t know if he didn’t like the homework or if that was his idea of using the materials he had on hand to express himself artistically. I don’t want to stifle the boy’s creativity or hurt his feelings, but I don’t think Evan will be turning in his first assignment. It was certainly indicative of the quality of work I have come to expect from my little free-ranger.

This is Amy’s second year riding the bus to school, but her first year riding it home in the afternoon. Wednesday, she forgot to get on the bus and the office called us to pick her up. Thursday, I was sure there would be no problems and walked to the bus stop to meet her. The road from our house to the bus stop is about 80 degrees uphill the entire way. I stopped twice to shake an imaginary rock out of my shoe and I still thought my heart was going into v-fib. I would have stopped more, but I couldn’t think of any reason for stopping other than gasping and sitting on the road. The bus stops on Northshore, but I stood back far enough to avoid being flattened by someone turning onto the mountain street without looking. A few minutes after I wheezed to the top of the mountain, Doug and Dharma arrived. We stood there talking as the bus arrived, deposited half a dozen children and pulled away. No Amy. Doug quizzed the neighborhood children while I called the school, expecting them to say Amy forgot to get on the bus again. The office didn’t have her and the teacher got on the phone to tell me she had made certain Amy got on her bus at the same time that the neighborhood children insisted that Amy was still sitting on the bus.

We calmly made the easy, downhill trip back to the house. Doug went inside to work in his dungeon while I hopped in the van to drive to the school. I thought the bus would run its’ route and then return Amy to school. As I pulled out of the neighborhood, the school called me. Amy had gotten off the bus at a stop in another neighborhood, on the other side of Northshore. In case you are unfamiliar with Knoxville, Northshore is a two lane, high speed race track littered with the carcases of unfortunate raccoons, squirrels and other animals. The idea of Amy wandering down Northshore was frightening. Street names and directions make as much sense as Martian to me and I thought I was looking for a street name instead of a subdivision name. Doug realized I was lost and decided he could run to Amy faster than I could drive to her. There was hysterical screaming, blaming and Twittering from many directions. I got to Doug before I found Amy and he commandeered the vehicle since I was clearly inept.

As we raced down Northshore for the umpteenth time, another parent called to tell me she was watching Amy until I arrived. She talked us there and we both hopped out of the van like crazy people. Amy was happily playing on a swingset under the watchful eye of several mothers until she saw us. She ran over and yelled at me. “Why didn’t YOU tell me which bus stop was mine?” Angry Amy got in the car and we asked her why she didn’t get off the bus when all of her neighborhood friends got off the bus. She responded by bursting into giant sobs. Why couldn’t she have cried in front of the pack of good mothers who hadn’t lost their children and yelled at me after we got in the van? Yes, I know mothers aren’t supposed to have thoughts like that, but since good mothers don’t misplace their 6-year-olds on school buses, my horrible thought is the least of my problems.

Friday, we drove the van to the bus stop. Doug stood at the car door, his hands on the key like he was about to duel in the deserted street, ready to chase the bus. I stood so far out on Northshore that the other cars could have run over my toes. My plan was to hop on the bus like the man who stands on the back bumper of the trash truck. Amy was the first child to hop off the bus. She rolled her eyes and in her very best imitation of our 15-year-old, asked us why we were there when nobody else had parents at the bus stop. We were embarrassing and she wanted to walk home with her friends. We slinked into the car and drove home in silence. I hope she enjoys that walk home in the rain and cold this winter, because I certainly wouldn’t want to do anything embarrassing like offer all the children a ride home.

Friday night I stayed up until 2 packing for Tommy. The rest of the night I stared at the clock. Saturday morning was a blur of car loading and trying to get out the door. I busied myself with paperwork the entire drive to LMU. As the car entered the campus, Tommy whispered, “I have butterflies in my stomach.” As long as I live, I will never cease to be proud of Tommy when he identifies his emotions. The amount of work it took for him to be able to do so is indescribable to NT parents.

We stumbled into the student center and the LMU students snatched Tommy and put him on the assembly line that is freshman check-in day. I leaned back into a wall so hard I probably left a large booty sized dent. I watched Tommy signing papers, getting his room key and talking with the other students. The room was ice cold and I felt a familiar but distant panic and fear. It was the exact same feeling that I had 18 years earlier as I checked into the hospital to force the overdue Tommy to make his entrance into the world. After a long labor and an epidural that left me completely numb below the chest for HOURS after delivery, Tommy emerged and his Apgar scores blew chunks. Instead of being in my arms, he was surrounded by a growing Army of NICU nurses who rushed him out of the room 5 minutes after he born. Fifteen minutes after Tommy was born, I sat alone in my room and said out loud to nobody, “I just had a baby.” A stared at the door, the phone and the clock over and over again. Waiting. After 30 minutes, I told myself my baby had died. I wept and tried to will my heart to stop beating. I just wanted it to stop. An hour after delivery I was shown a picture of my baby that did not make me feel better and told that he had a pneumothorax. Many hours later, I was wheeled to NICU to see my son. I went back to my room and cried more. The nurses said it was just hormones and told me I would get over it. The next day I was discharged and my crying continued. The doctor said, “this too shall pass” and walked away. I lived on the couch outside the NICU for a week. When I finally left the hospital with my son, I felt like I had a bullet lodged in my heart that I would carry forever. Leaving my child at school and driving away on Saturday afternoon, that bullet shifted and the pain was immense. The daily daggers from the rest of my life were unbearable.

Tommy called and texted all night. My phone no longer sits on my desk. It is clutched in my hands day and night. “Make sure my snake gets a swim tonight.” “I walked to the grocery store.” “The showers are cold.” “I’m going to play paintball now.”

I could enroll 15-year-old Sarah in college right now and have no fears. She would adapt instantly to dorms, make friends and be a straight A student. Now. She already has the maturity and the ability. She will pack up her belongings, drive herself to college and move herself in without any help wanted or needed from us. I will miss her horribly, but I won’t have the anxiety that I have now. Noah? Noah will probably skip college and be a freegan beach bum. Amy is going to be enrolled in military school before adolescence to learn to control that nasty little temper of hers. Evan is still my baby. Don’t talk to me about 3 not being a baby. I can’t hear you with my fingers in my ears. La-la-la-la-la.

Other person: “I’m jealous of Tommy getting to go away to school. I’d like to go back to school and start over. Wouldn’t you?”
Me: “No. Been there, done that.”
Other person: “Well, I’m glad you’re happy just being a housewife.”

There are a lot of things that I would like to do. Going back to college isn’t one of them. I have a life that I don’t want walk away from. I learn from my children every day. I would much rather be doing things than memorizing what the professor wants me to believe. I have lived and done enough to know that some college professors are completed detached from the real world. I had three children when I went back to school for a second degree to try and start my life over again. Two different professors teaching ignorance about Autism was enough for me. College professors seem incapable of accepting that their political and social ideas are not the only ideas out there. I did get a lot out of my college experiences. I just don’t want to do it again.

As for being just a housewife, well some statements are too stupid to even acknowledge.

Update: I do not mean to insult college or professors. The first time I went to school, I was a child. I didn’t take school as seriously as I should have, but it did what it should. It lit fires in my mind and inspired me to be active and passionate about the world in which I live. I went back as an adult who had experienced life’s ups and downs. I learned that the feminist professor who inspired me to believe in legalized prostitution because it is a victim-less crime and a woman’s right was really a moron. While I still believe in the concept of legalized prostitution, it is neither victim-less nor sexually empowering. That professor needs to meet the young prostitute who is so psychologically damaged she can’t have a healthy relationship. My second experience in college, I had professors who were entrenched in the real world and I learned a lot from the way they themselves grew and adapted to try and help make the community better. I also had a lot of professors who would say things that I knew were wrong. More than that, I felt like my second experience in college I wanted to be out doing and not sitting in a classroom. I wanted a practicum education, not a lecture hall. I guess I am just too old for school.

Slow down everyone! There are tiny people out there.

Are you ready for school? Some of us are and some of us are not. Sarah, Noah and Amy are ready. Their backpacks, bags of school supplies and clothes for tomorrow morning are piled by the front door. There are also three large flags leaning on the door, because all teenage girls carry an armload of flags to and from school. Well, they do over here. I think she uses them to send signals to boys. Two of the going-to-school-tomorrow children are in their bed sleeping. One is in the bathroom trying to scrape printing ink off of herself. She will probably go to school with turquoise splotches on her face and hands, but at least her summer assignments are completed. She doesn’t have a padlock for her locker yet. Last May, she decided to put it in a safe place where her younger siblings couldn’t destroy or lose it. That safe place was her ceiling fan. Last week, she started trying to get it down. You know what you forget over the summer? Lock combinations. Lockers won’t be assigned for weeks, so she’ll be fine.

We ran in the red bulls-eye store for Amy’s gel pens and watched the other people buying school supplies. I’ve been doing this for so long that I can guess other children’s ages by the supplies in their cart. Tonight I realized the difference between the college students living in dorms and the students living in the Fort. The dorm student had a cart full of completely coordinated bedding, bath and desk accessories. The student living in the Fort had the same items, with an additional two boxes of rat poison, half a dozen mousetraps and 4 cans of bug spray. I wish they would buy smoke detectors and fire extinguishers.

Tommy and Evan are far from ready for their schools that start a week after the public schools. They will be ready long before I am ready for them to begin their different but equally monumental new experiences.

I have been having recurring dreams lately. In one of them, I am moving Tommy into his dorm in my jammies. In the dream, I am aware that I need to get dressed, I just don’t seem able to do so. Don’t you hate it when your dreams are so obvious you can’t ignore them?

Me: “How is the summer assignment coming Sarah?”
Sarah: “I can’t work on that until I finish my book.”
Me: “How is the summer assignment coming Sarah?”
Sarah: “I’m thinking about it.”
Me: “Do you need help?”
Sarah: “No.”
Me: “When are you going to do it?”
Sarah: “After I finish my book.”
Me: “No.”
Sarah: “Tomorrow.”
Me: “That’s correct.”

Guess who will stay up all night reading? I hope Stephenie Meyer helps Sarah get her assignment done.

To try and convince me that Tommy really is going away to college, yesterday we attended Freshman Orientation and registered Tommy for classes. The teenagers went one direction and the parents went another. I don’t know what Tommy’s orientation was like, but the parents basically go from one Q&A session to another. Someone from every department would give a 3 minute “everything will be okay” speech and then parents would interrogate the school official. One of our very first speakers bragged about the school’s early warning system that sends out text messages and e-mails when the campus has a crisis of any kind. Since we were sitting in a room with zero Internet access, I looked at my phone. No signal. For the rest of the 8 hour orientation, I was distracted by the bars on my cell phone. I walked in and out of rooms, up and down hallways and stuck my cell phone gripping hand out of windows and doorways. The only time I went above two bars was outside the buildings. WiFi is non-existent on the campus and cell phone coverage is terrible. How much good is their system really going to do anyone? I am leaving my child in the middle of nowhere with archaic technology. Osama bin Laden probably has faster communication in his cave than my son will have in the TN/KY mountains. I don’t care how tiny it is, all Universities need to have wireless options. Did I mention that using Outlook is forbidden on campus? Or that you MUST use Microsoft Office 2007 (no student discount available), but be sure to bring proof that you own that license? Or that P2P is illegal on campus? Also, the campus IT head discourages the use of Macs since they don’t know nothin’ ’bout them Macs. It’s like we’re sending our child to learn dinosaur veterinary medicine on Isla Nublar.