Early mornings, crosstown traffic, carpool lines – the start of the school year gives rise to a particular kind of irritation. The kids’ school is eager to assert its authority over me, sending an onslaught of instructions-laden emails, while on the swim team, the start of whose season coincides with the beginning of the school year, at least a couple parents are compelled to resist my much gentler, briefer, and less-expensive early-season directives. Everyone expects me to submit. In the past I’ve stifled the impulse to object to such condescension, instead venting privately to my wife or to friends and family, but this year, I’m dealing with perceived slights head-on rather than allow the frustration to fester. For the most part, I’m finding it pretty gratifying.
I more or less told off the school’s chief fundraiser in a back-and-forth email chain. He repeatedly pressured me for a donation, appealing to the need to raise teachers’ salaries. I explained that tuition was up over 25% in four years, quoted the obscene figure I’m currently paying for two lower schoolers, and argued that if the school couldn’t afford to pay its teachers, it had a spending issue, not a fundraising issue. He invited me to review the school’s budgeting over lunch, and I finally said, “I don’t want to waste our time. A donation is not forthcoming.” He was a lot terser in his responses after that. When he responded that “Parent and alumni opinions are always welcome, and I did share yours with [Headmaster] Dubose Egleston,” I took it as a threat, a kind of “I’m telling on you,” and responded by carbon copying the headmaster and wishing them both the best of luck in the new school year.
I had a similar back and forth with an insurance agent. He sought quick payment on a quote and insisted that his underwriter would demand the trees on our lot be unduly pruned. This is a common occurrence in our neighborhood these days, as insurers looking to reduce exposure to coastal property use whatever pretense necessary to drop people. I told the agent my tree company refused to cut the limbs in question and that they even offered to provide a letter to the effect that there was no risk to the roof from falling limbs. He was unmoved. “Mr. Lupton,” he wrote, “PICA is going to require that the limbs be trimmed back that are overhanging the dwelling. Have a great day!” It was not his ironic dangling modifier that I couldn’t tolerate; it was his parting “have a great day,” the tone of which seemed to me one of smug indifference. I wrote him in simple terms that I was sure he’d understand: “PICA is full of shit,” I said. Unlike the school fundraiser, he at least made no attempt to have the last word.
A swim team mother who tells me her middle schooler is destined for the Ivy League, would not allow me such a victory. She wrote me and the rest of the coaching staff seeking a higher group placement for her daughter, this while her daughter is skipping our practice to attend a high school team’s workouts. High school swimming is the equivalent of summer league for older kids. I told the parent that it didn’t really matter what group her kid was in, the program we are offering is 100% better than high school swimming. In her third email, she wrote that as a parent, her job is to “look at the whole human, and there are things [her daughter] gets out of being on the high school team that support her human development beyond swimming.” I let that one sit there; I’ll handle it in person at our September parents meeting.
I’ve encouraged the kids not to let themselves be pushed around either. In response to the news that the neighbor boy across the street was pinching, slapping, and kicking Scotty, I told the boys they had my permission to “put him on the ground.” When Cartter heeded the suggestion, I asked him afterwards how it felt. I was second-guessing my parenting and giving him a little lecture on other ways to handle the situation. I don’t want the boys to become the sorts of kids who go around getting in fights, and I had mixed feelings when Cartter told me, “It felt good.”
Better that I save my sensitivity for the kids rather than waste it on all the adults coming for their pound of flesh. The boys are immune to the bluntness of my will anyway, Scotty in particular. At their music school, they’re working on a tricky little rhythm, and when Scotty wanted to skip straight ahead to the recording portion of his homework rather than play along with the demo track on the ipad and learn the piece first, I made the mistake of trying to help him. Rather than pay me any attention, he tapped ceaselessly on the ipad, trying and failing to pull up the “click track” play mode he desired. When I finally tried to take command with what I thought were very mild instructions, he instantly went limp and broke down into silent tears. He didn’t speak to me for the rest of the night. The song with the tricky beat he was trying to learn was, fittingly, “Mr. Big Stuff.”
The Raging Elitist 