Tomorrow will be Jack’s last official day as a first grader. It’s a half day, and I know they’re not doing any real work of course. The kids will finish cleaning out mailboxes and drawers and clearing windowsills. All art will be removed from the walls and the blackboard will get scrubbed until it’s clean and shiny. The kids are a little young to really do autographs, but I saw that everyone signed a little booklet that Jack created in art class about a week ago.
In Jack’s “compliments” book, which came home a few days ago, most of his friends wrote “You’re so funny” or “Jack is very funny”, so I’m seeing a trend here. Class clown in his future? Well I can’t say that I would be surprised, seeing as I hold a very long unbroken stretch of class-clownedness spanning from 6th grade to 9th grade.
Jack: I hate being the youngest one in class!
me: Maybe by next year you’ll catch up to everyone.
Jack: (thinks about it for a second) Heyyy, that’s not possible! They’ll get older too! (then he realizes that I was sort of kidding)
me: Don’t worry. Being younger means that you’ll finish school before they will. You’ll be 17 and they’ll be 18 when you all graduate from high school.
Jack: Really…Mom, who cares about that now? That’s like 60 years from now. Wait, that’s like 11 years from now! (glad he’s getting better at math…) I don’t want to be the youngest. I want to be the oldest now!
me: You have your whole life to worry about getting older. It’s all that grown-ups do. You’re only 6, so enjoy that and who cares what age your friends are.
Jack: My friends care. That’s who. They’ll make fun of me for the next 11 years.
me: Yeah, you’re probably right. (Have I really forgotten how it is in school when you’re young? Brutal…)
Jack: Of course I’m right! You never even DID 1st grade, and even if you did, you were probably old when you did it, right?
Nice, eh? Jack doesn’t realize that like him, I also started Kindergarten at a young age, and was younger than all my friends from 1st right up to 12th grade. I did pretty well for myself. Sort of. Ahem. Well NOW I’m fine.
I know that school and learning, and kids in general, are WAY more advanced and totally more threatening than they used to be. Everyone knows so damn much these days. At age 6 even! I hope I can stay relevant enough to help Jack through everything that’s waiting for him out there. 2nd grade looms on the horizon. But for now, Jack has 2 months of school-free bliss ahead of him, where age and status don’t matter, and he can just be a kid.
Oh, and on a side note, Jack lost yet another tooth! So I gotta go do this thing before I forget…AGAIN!
Sh*t My 18-Year-Old Says 