Another which involves my dying mid-way through. Am nothing if not overflowing with new ideas.

Recently Kevin and I attended a Chicago-based homeschool conference together.  I am a lover of conferences, I should say, all the way back from my days as an Elementary Education undergrad.  So as soon as I learned of this one, I thought it the perfect opportunity to immerse my willing husband a bit deeper into the world of education, and homeschool, to boot. 

First thing in the morning we were pitched in the gigantic ballroom with everything from gummy vegetable vitamins to foreign language programs to (booth upon booth of) anti-evolution literature.  We found a handful of really great companies and invested in several outside-the-box books, split a terribly overpriced cheese danish and scurried off to our schedule of sessions that we carefully planned the night before. 

One that we were most excited to attend that morning was the Large Families discussion, where we imagined that we could get a glimpse into our future (heh, planning more children after all!) (but more on that later).  We even left the earlier session a smidge early to ensure that we would get good seats for this one.  I wanted to know how a family of seven created a routine and how they orchestrated homeschool every day, and field trips, and dinners in quiet restaurants, and what they all drove to get there for the Love of Pete.  I wanted to hear about budgeting woes and successes, sibling rivalry and how everything would turn out absolutely fantastic in the end with gigantic family Christmases and brilliant, happy grandchildren running everywhere.

So after sneaking out of the Multiple Intelligences session with time to spare, we were not at all surprised to be the very first people to the Large Families room, and we sat and waited for moms and dads and long trails of ducklings to begin filing in at any moment.

There was the discussion leader, and a woman.  And then eventually a clock at the top of the hour.  No large families, no small families.  Crickets, I do recall.  Chirping crickets.

I thought for a moment about the backup session we'd picked- ha! in case this one was full! - which was something about Educating Children Who Would Rather Be Off Building Forts, and just as I leaned over to suggest it to my husband (over the chirping crickets, that is) the discussion leader placed a tiny silver hook in my mouth and reeled me to the front of the room, directing the four of us to organize our chairs into a circle.  We were going to have a small but helpful discussion, just the few of us, she said.

I believed her for a very short moment as she introduced herself as the mom of seven grown children, and when the mom beside me said she had five, with a sixth in the works.  I thought it might still be okay, this hour and a half session.  But then our bold leader spoke again, outlining what we should talk about first and second, which were laundry and cooking.  She zipped from zero to sixty, suggesting right off the bat to the mom and myself and my husband, that people really hate to give useless gifts anymore, and that we should try hard to think of someone in our lives who might be willing to pony up large capacity frontloaders for the mountains of dirty clothes that come with having a large family, if we didn't already have them.

(Like a washing machine sugar daddy?)

My thoughts immediately shifted to Scooby-Doo speak, and I scratched my head and distorted my face.  Joining the circle of chairs was a mistake, I realized.  But digging deeper for the silver lining I thought I might interject that even with my relatively small family of five, I have cut my utility bills beyond belief by hanging our wet laundry outside in the breeze all summer, and how helpful that is to the environment, as well.

But she wasn't finished, and I was placed on hold.

She went on to say that she understands the difficulty that is keeping track of all this clothing that children are forever outgrowing, and that it can be terribly stressful to organize it all into bins in the garage for later use, and that we should just allow ourselves to pitch it and buy new for each child, each season, to lighten our work load as mothers.

Stressful? is what I was thinking in my Scooby Doo voice when the mom beside me nodded her head and agreed aloud that, yes, it was stressful to box up children's clothing.  And then the leader actually responded by saying, We live in a disposable world anyway.  (Shaggy?!)  This was the very first time that day that I thought I might kill myself before the session time was over.  It was the first time of many times I had that thought.  In fact I didn't even have that thought earlier in the day when we were chased down by no fewer than three separate middle-aged men waving pamphlets about devotions and turtles and Darwin, because really, there's plenty of room for all of us with all of our beliefs to agree and disagree quietly as long as we have not corralled others into a very large room for a very small discussion about piling landfills with a large family's worth of barely-worn clothing.

Just as the first drop of my frontal lobe trickled down my face in the form of a tear, another mom entered the room.   It was a long walk up the aisle to the front, and she looked very kind and innocent.  I tried to shoo her away, warning her like you might warn the oncoming traffic on an interstate that the county sheriff is clocking speeds right over that yonder hill, flashing your headlights once or twice or wildly, in this case.  I was blinking and coughing and jerking my head to the right, and signaling to get ouuuuut while she could! 

But it was too late.  She sat down beside me, unaware.  And then somewhere between our leader's story about utilizing a fair amount of homeschool time for all seven of her children to have sock matching races for the exciting reward of a solitary m&m (oh Internet, I could not make this shit up) and complaining how, of all people it was her teenage dauuuughter falling behind on laundry, the new mom innocently spoke up.  She explained that she, too, involves her five children in household chores and asked the group how they respond to the kids complaining about it. 

And without so much as a moment's hesitation our fearless leader directed her, for next time, to say something like, Well I am sorry you got me as a mother!

I waited a second to not be the first laugh in the room, like what a funny way to respond to your child!  But she continued on, about telling your child you are Just! So! Sorry! for the hardship he must bear in his life, and that he should just go right out and find himself a new mother because apparently the one he was paired with was off her effing rocker just miserable to live with!  And she was saying it all in syllables, just like you'd imagine, with a very serious, ill look upon her face.

I leaned over and popped Kevin's lower jaw back onto his skull, and then jotted down in my notebook, Always Be Passive-Aggressive With Children.

Twenty minutes went by. 

Twenty minutes where I did not say a word.  Another unknowing mother joined the circle, another unknowing mother silently kicked herself in the head with all her might.  The leader instructed us to cook a large hunk of meat each Sunday and feed the family from it the rest of the week (or block of cheddar, I suppose, for our strangely planet-conscious family) and she graced the world with the very new idea of buying apples and oranges in bulk.  And slicing fifteen of them before dinner because our children, too, will ask in awe just as hers once did, Oh Mother! Who is coming over for dinner tonight with this wonderful spread!?  And also however it was she stuck in there the piece about having the freedom to throw our knives away once they begin to dull because they're so cheap now anyway, and disposable society, bang head, bang head.

I sat there mulling over exactly how rude it would be to up and leave the room when the leader was already probably feeling pretty crapped out over such low attendance in the first place.  (Though now that I think about it, was there some sort of message the first-year conference attendees missed out on?  That only these few people joined the room in the first place?)  But after a while I knew for sure I could not sit there for another second. 

So just after my phone vibrated with a text message from my sister Sant that, Yeah! All is well! We're having fun! Just went to the video store for free kid movies! I stood up and grabbed my bag and my dying husband, sadly explaining to the group that my sister had my baby and she needed me.  It was all I had.

We ran out and died on the marble foyer floor, not three steps from the doors. 

Thankfully, the rest of the conference was better.  For the most part session descriptions made it pretty clear which talks were to be avoided, and we did, and by the end of the day we had a much clearer picture of what it was we were shooting for as we begin the school year. 

Seeing our kids the next day, I couldn't help but try out a tiny slice of that sage advice we received back in session three, and I nudged a large basket of clothes towards my six-year-old son and told him if he folded it quick he could have a whole m&m I'd found between couch cushions.  You want me to do all of this for one tiny m&m? he whined.  And then I gave him a terrible sob story about being the worst mother in all the world and handed him three hundred bucks for a psychiatrist.  Ten percent of which he wisely deposited into his savings account and the other ninety he spent on fifty pounds of m&m's.  And new clothes for Jack next season.  And Hefty bags.  The end.

Comments

[Nikki]

Yikes, maybe she doesn't want a world left for grandchildren to inherit? Sounds like KJ already understands the relative value of things!

All good wishes for the beginning of your school year. I bet loads of us wish we could be attending your lessons.

[Alissa]

me getting knocked up AGAIN?! has inspired you?

that lady was totally batshit crazy. please disregard everything she said.

[AJU5's Mom]

Okay, that presentation was just bad. Yes, you can get your kids to help with chores, but not for a single M&M! My friend with 5 kids (7.5 and under) "bribes" them with going places once they are done. This of course is on top of the very basic daily chores (clean up your room, make your bed, etc). So, yeah, that session/mom was bad!

Good luck next year!

[Erica]

I can't even think of a comment. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the crap that woman was spewing. Did she get paid for that?

[C @ Kid Things]

I can't even imagine the hell that would break loose if I tried to give my son 1 single M&M. You can barely even taste 1 M&M.

Crazy. The whole thing. Crazy.

[Michelle Z]

Wow. I give Braden 5 M&Ms every day for taking his (disgusting because he needs iron) vitamin. 5, because he is 5.

Now, I feel bad that he gets 5 M&Ms (with his breakfast). BUT - crap. I feel like I overshot. How ever will I get him to do laundry for ONE M&M now!?

Good god, Molly - that woman sounds crazy. I'm sad she's got many children to send out into the world.

[Jen L.]

Holy jeez. What a nutjob! I'm glad you came back to life after you died. I'm also glad you blogged about this. Someday when we bloggers decide to collectively write a book about all the crazies we have encountered over the years, we'll want to include this story FOR SURE.

[Jenny]

Hey, do you think that woman might read your blog? :)

[Frema]

I already know the details and yet I'm dying to read about the more children part. Not that the homeschooling panelist wasn't batsh*t crazy, but still. MORE CHILDREN! Awesomeness.

[rkmama]

You are a better person than me. I would've maybe restrained from punching her but at the very least would have given her a "Seriously?!" before I walked out. Or maybe I would have just died in my chair. How polite of you to wait until you made it out of the room.
MORE BABIES?!?!?!?!

[BetteJo]

Yeah, the more babies part? C'mon, tell!

Oh, and I think quietly opening a vein and bleeding to death very slowly might have been more fun and maybe illuminating in a hallucinogenic kind of way - than sitting in on that session. Yikes!