Bad Parenting Pisses Me Off

When you start reading this, it isn’t going to seem so bad. It’s the end that was the kicker.

Today was Son#2’s First Holy Communion pictures. Girls wear white dresses, veils and white gloves. Boys can wear all white suits and white shoes, white pants with white shirt and tie and white shoes OR white shirts and ties with dark pants and dress shoes. Thank heavens for the third choice. I couldn’t see myself buying an all white suit for my kid… and making him wear white shoes. He would have just looked like dork. Blech. Besides that, the functionality in an all white suit for a little boy is exactly… zero. So we’re doing the white shirt, white tie, dark pants route.

Last night at SIX O’CLOCK!!!, I get a phone call from a Mom I have never heard of, asking me questions about the pictures. She apologizes and says she got my number from the quilting paper (I’m making the Communion Quilt and each kid made a square for it), but she has some questions. I’m cool with it, but I tell her right off that I’m not Catholic, I don’t know the big answers, and by the way, if she has girl questions, I can’t answer. She pushes on, not hearing me or not caring, or both.

I say to her, “Do your children go to St. Insert-name-of-our-school-here or just attend CCD there?” She replies they go to school there and she has twins… a boy and a girl.

Now I KNOW of every kid in 2nd grade and I had never heard of these people. I was puzzled and then decided that I’ve been so overwhelmed, they must be new and I didn’t meet them.

So I say, “Do they have Mrs. T or Mrs. V?” and she replies.... “Yes.” That was her answer. “Yes”. Well, because of the policy our school has that twins are always separated, I figured “Ok, she is saying that they have each”.

She proceeds to ask me girl questions. I proceed to tell her again I don’t have girls. She asks, I try to answer, I give her the phone number of someone who WOULD know and then… I realize… she has bought NOTHING for her kids to wear yet. Nothing. It is 6:00, pictures are the next day and she hasn’t done jack. I tell her where I bought my son's clothes and tell her I’m going to let her go so she can find out who is still open.

This morning my son and I get there for pictures. There is a Mom dressed in a funky green suit, waiting… waiting because she forgot her money to pay for the pictures and her husband is bringing it. I think nothing of it. When everyone is gone I start talking to the woman who is the head of CCD and Holy Communion. I have gotten to know her well over the years and really like her… in particular because she has NEVER once tried to convert me.

I ask her if a Mom of twins came in and she informs me it was the woman in the funky green suit. She says, “Something is not right there” to which I replied, “You’re telling me…” and I told her the story.

The CCD teacher says, “Mrs. L, that woman’s kids DO NOT go to school here. They are in my CCD. She has NO IDEA what the names of her kids' teachers are. She said ‘Yes’ to you because she DOESN’T KNOW.”

I don’t know why, but that really frickin’ pissed me off. She has two 2nd graders… and she doesn’t know the names of their teachers? There is so much wrong with that on so many fronts. She hadn’t planned for their pictures, she hasn’t shown up to half the CCD meetings, her kids haven’t done their quilt squares… and she doesn’t know the names of their teachers.

I’m sure that is just the tip of the iceberg. She probably isn’t involved in their lives at all and they may be better for it. They’re Kodak moments.

She sucks.