Oh baby, the gauntlet has been thrown. Game on. This is war.
Ben got us back for the room-wrapping escapade. He had help and he played dirty. He will pay.
On Thursday afternoon, Ben came up to me with his head bowed and, pulling a piece of paper out of his pocket, said “Mom, I forgot to show this to you.”
Can you put yourself in my place? My vision dimmed. The sounds of laughing children playing in the sun, celebrating the first day of a glorious spring break, hushed to a distant woosh. I felt my heart slow and had a feeling I’ve had before: I went into Management Mode. I think I’ve described this before. It’s a part of me that surprises me every time it happens. Something big and distressing happens and I turn into the Generalissimo. My inner clipboard appears and I feel as if I can see a mile down the road. I was ticking things off: 1. ok, fun is over. Ben is in trouble. 2. Go inside and get ready to have the Big Talk. 3. Find stationery; Ben will be writing apologies to Mrs. Apol and Mrs. Braman. 4. Call Karl. 5. Berate self for not more aggressively addressing your son’s obvious problem in distinguishing what’s funny and what’s not [the old “if it bends, it’s funny; if it breaks…” rule].
This all happened in about 2 seconds, as if from the wrong end of a telescope. Then Ben turned the paper over:
The telescope flipped back around and, if I had actually had one in my hand, I might have whacked him with it. PUNKED!!!! And with a teacher’s help. Apparently she made one for each kid in the class.  Now what is the protocol here? Can you punk your kid’s teacher?
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Well, you may have to wait until next April 1 so as not to appear being a poor sport, 😉
I love it – haven’t ever heard of a teacher helping her students prank their parents. This is a tale Ben will tell his children.
Mrs. Braman gets my vote for Teacher of the Year!! You could also explain that new-to-me word: punk. Back in the day, it was a noun.
This made me and Julian laugh out loud, and it reminded me of how we punked one of my babysitting charge’s parents by rushing in the house one April Fool’s day with the child howling and holding his arm…
Mr. De Boer–an actor called Austin Kutcher has a show called Punked, in which he goes around playing practical jokes on people, and the noun then morphed into a verb as in “YOU’VE BEEN PUNKED!”
You absolutely can get the teacher back! She has it coming!
Lizz LOVED Mrs. Braman. i don’t remember having an April fool joke played on us.
I thought Mrs. Braman did it every year. With Willem, he’d punched a friend in the stomach on the playground. It was so unlike him, I was speechless, but his obvious glee at giving the paper to me was a clue that something was odd. I do think Mrs. Braman should get punked in return at some point — by every single parent of every single child. But what could it be?
My name is also Sarah DeBoer, but i spell it with an ‘H’… i enjoy that you kid punked you. Have a good day!
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