Two Days, Two Phone Calls

The phone rang at lunchtime yesterday. It was the principal of my daughter's middle school. He told me that he was on speaker phone and that Laura was in his office with him. I didn't hesitate. The first words out of my mouth were, "What's she done now?"

I can only imagine Laura's eyes rolling when she heard that. Until yesterday, Laura had never before even been in the principal or the vice principal's office for discipline or, for that matter, for anything else. She'd never once had a detention or a suspension or anything like it. This is because, as I've noted before, she is just like her dad-only with a good attitude.

Back in the day when I roamed the halls of the middle school (so long ago now that I think of it that it was then known as a junior high) it was not common, but still not unknown, to find the kid who would grow up to become Laura's dad in the principal or vice principal's office, busted once again for some trifling offense. Same thing in high school when from time to time I'd find myself doing hard time after school owing to a class which had been skipped in favor of a delicious breakfast at the Big Boy down the street or some such thing. Laura would never be caught dead at a Big Boy or anywhere else when she's supposed to be in class, no matter how good the buffet might be.

No, what Laura had done to earn her first-ever visit to the office was something remarkable. The principal told me that the administrators and the teachers held a vote to select the top three students in the school based on such factors as scholarship and what we used to call citizenship and the like, and Laura was voted one of the three. He went on to say that she and the others, along with similar awardees from the other middle schools in the district and the high schools, would be recognized at a special breakfast next month. So if you think this is a case of her doing the work and me getting the Eggs Bennie, you would be correct. In fact, looking as I do for teaching examples in everyday life almost every day, I shall use this very example to explain to her the concept of justice.

I felt my eyes moisten as I digested the news, partly because I really like free breakfasts, partly because I was so proud of her, and partly because I was amazed she could accomplish what she did while bearing on her slender young shoulders the odious and overbearing burden of having me as her father. And if you don't believe me about that, ask her about it sometime.

Jeannie came home while I was on the phone and I asked the principal to repeat the good news for her benefit. Jeannie scowled as I handed her the phone (really, you should have seen the look on her face.) She was hungry and in a hurry and not knowing who was on the other end, didn't want to talk on the phone. Her face brightened immediately however upon hearing the news. We spent our lunch together marveling over what our union had wrought. She kept saying, "How about that?" And I kept nodding in agreement. I think she cried a little, too.

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The phone rang at lunchtime today, just about twenty-four hours to the minute after that call from Laura's principal had come in.

The result of this call was the same: Jeannie cried. But this time the news was not good. It was a friend of Jeannie's phoning to tell her that a mutual friend, Jeannie's best friend, in fact, was dead.