My son is nine and he’s very averse to doing homework. Through the years he has come up with some awesome excuses to try and get out of it, but the one he used the other day was so completely unexpected that I’m still trying to sort it out. It happened like this:
I had received a message through our school’s app that my son would have homework on this particular evening. This usually consists of a math worksheet that could be done in ten minutes but usually takes at least two hours due to my son’s consistent bellyaching and procrastinating. When we got home I told him to get a snack and then bring me his worksheet so that we could get started. He said “I don’t have homework.” This his go-to response. I told him I already knew he had homework and he got a little agitated. After his snack I told him to turn off the Fortnite video and go get his homework. He said he didn’t have it. When I asked why his response was “My teacher didn’t give me my worksheet.”
“Did you tell him you didn’t get one?” I asked.
“Yeah!” Adamantly.
“What did he say?
“You don’t need one, go sit down.”
“Bud, I know that’s a lie. Go to your room. You can come out when you find your homework.”
He was in there for a while. Eventually my wife went in. When she came out she told me that he had told her that my son said the girl who passed out the homework didn’t give him one and his teacher said you don’t get one go sit down.
I went to his room and confronted him. I told him I knew he’d lied because he’d given two different stories about why he didn’t have his worksheet. I told him I was going to look in his backpack and he became agitated. He said ” Dad wait. Wait, Dad, I have to tell you something.”
You’ve suffered through this far, keep going. It’s about to get good.
“What do you want to tell me?” I ask, still holding his backpack half unzipped in my hand.
“My teacher’s been cheating on me!” He exclaimed dramatically.
I was so amazed at this statement that I didn’t immediately realize the hilarity of what my son had just said. I did not expect to hear this. Of all the possible combinations of words in the English language that my son knows, the words he uttered were very close to the bottom of the list of sentences I was expecting.
“What?” I knew he just hadn’t used the right words to express what he was thinking, but the connotations I, as an adult, associated with the statement were ominous.
“Yeah. He cheats on the whole class. He does it every day.” There was not an ounce of excitement in this statement but it dripped with accusation. I assumed he meant that his teacher taught more than one class and he had somehow made a connection, at his young age, between this and marital infidelity. I began to become mildly concerned.
“Bud, I don’t know what that means.” At this point he became extremely animated, stabbing the center of his chest with the tips of his fingers and waving his hands about.
“That math is not my math! That’s Mr. (teacher’s name deleted for privacy)’s math! He makes me do HIS math! That’s not my math! Why do I even go to school if I have to do his job and he won’t even do his own math!?”
I intended to explain to him that the teacher’s job was to teach him math, not to just sit and do math all day. I pictured some sort of Dickensian workshop in which an evil foreman forced children to solve equations that would be sold to the likes of Newton or whatever brilliant mathematician lived in the same era as the talented, dearly departed Chuck. About three words into my explanation my voice cracked. I knew I was about to lose it so I said to my son, as sternly as possible, “Stay here!” I vacated the space and retired quickly to my room of repose and respite. As soon as I got the door shut I collapsed, in front of my wife and daughters, into a fit of hysterical rage. When I was able I explained the situation to them and suffered another rib cracking fit of mirth. When I had composed myself I returned to my son’s room to finalize my harangue.
He was sitting on his bed with his arms severely crossed and his eyes downcast on the floor. When he heard me walk in he slowly raised his head and, with the most solemnly disciplinarian voice you can imagine a nine year old having, said, “I heard you laughing. It isn’t funny.”
I retired to the back yard to compose myself.
I bid you adieu…and a don’t.
Adieu…follow up with your children’s odd statements. You might mine a few gems as valuable as bitcoin.
A don’t…take what they say literally. Mon Dieu! You’ll drive yourself insane doing that!
The Bickfolo 