Tardy
by Sarah Woodard
Monday April 15th
7:10 am
“GET UP!” My mother screamed at me, attempting to pull the covers off of me and letting every ounce of warm air surrounding my body escape.
“No! Five more minutes please?”
“Get up! You’re gonna make me late for work.”
My mother: Always thinking about herself. She will wake me up in the morning, sure but I have to remember it is not because of her undying love for me and attempts to make me a successful woman and to never be late for school, no. It’s for her. It is so she will not be late for work. If there happens to be an incident where I fail to rise in the morning, she will not, like my best friends mother, wait for me patiently while nicely rushing me, no, she will in fact leave. I have to make the difficult decision every morning to wake up, or to miss school. HMMMM tough one.
` On this particular morning I made the very logical decision of sleeping in. My mother was far from happy with this but she had to leave. “I’ll just take the bus”
“Fine, but DON’T be late! I hate getting those emails!” Yes, my school emails the parental units if the child is marked tardy or absent to one or more classes on any particular day. Why? Who knows, it does nothing. To inform a parent of their child’s tardies is the epitome of stupidity. The parent can do nothing about it. The message says “please speak to your child about his/her tardy on _____ the _____ of ______.” Not only do they not even know the sex of this alleged child but a parent would most likely do nothing more than say don’t be late again, or why were you late today? But my mother despises those emails not because of my tardy, but because she has to deal with so many of them they become the very same type of nuisance as junk mail. Pointless and annoying to have to go through and delete them all.
“I won’t. Don’t worry,” I sleepily lied to her. She somehow fails to realize that for me to be on time and take the bus I would have to wake up even earlier then if she drove me. There is no possible way for me to get to school on time and wake up later than usual. But hopefully she will not happen to check the date on the email.
8:45 am
In bed
I sleepily glance at the clock, FUUUCK, I was only supposed to go back to sleep for half an hour! So I’m pretty sure I missed my bus, which was scheduled to come at 8:20. This tends to happen to me quite often. For some reason waking up to go to school is the most challenging thing to wake up for. Waking up for work seems to happen without an alarm. The fear of being late for work is intense. You can’t get fired from school. Just emailed. Waking up for church is even easier than school, and church tends to get pretty boring. I could even pop right out of bed to get some breakfast with friends or I could go to bed three hours later than usual on a Friday night and wake up at seven in the morning if I had fun plans. But school? The very thought of it even makes me tired.
8:50 am
In bed…still.
I checked the bus schedule and it seems the next bus doesn’t come for another half hour. It would seem that I will not only get a tardy email for second period but an absence one for first. Brilliant. I can’t wait to feel the buzz of my cell phone when I receive the angry text message from my mother about it. Although lately she has become accustomed to forwarding me the messages, texting is probably too much of a hassle. And forwarding them is in fact pretty much what the school is asking to do. “Inform your child,” indeed I am very informed now. For some reason though I can’t help but think how useful it would be if they just sent the emails straight to me. Just sort of take out the middleman.
7:30 pm
The house phone rings. I usually ignore it but I have a feeling that its school. They always call me around 7:30.
“Hello?”
“This is Berkeley High calling to notify you that your student seerah had one or more tardies on Monday April 15th. Please discuss these tardies with your child.”
“Who is it Sarah?”
“Sorry we aren’t interested.” I told the phone.
“It was some election call wanting us to support John McCain”
“Really?” My mom seems a little confused but I’m pretty confident that she believes my story. The phone rings again. The absence call, this is the most important to intercept so as to avoid a possible scolding.
“Hello?”
“Hello this is Berkeley High school calli…”
“Hello?”
“Hello this is Berkeley High school callin…”
“Heeelllooo?”
“Sarah, just hang up the phone!” She seems very irritated with me I think it would be a good time to let her be. The phone rings again.
“Hola esto es Berkeley High...” No way are they actually calling me in Spanish.
“Sorry they don’t live here anymore.” She won’t ask me about this call she is fed up already because of the first two. Now is the perfect opportunity to enjoy the short period of time between the calls and the emails.
Tuesday April 16th
7:30 am
“GET UP!” here we go again.
“I don’t want a replay of yesterday so please just get up.” She seems so serious about it I should probably get up this morning. After another twenty minutes of sleep I slowly start to drag my body off the bed, limb by limb.
7:55 am
“Lets GO SARAH!” I seem to hear that every couple of seconds while rushing to find clothing to throw on.
“Coming!” I reply the same lame response every time while shoving the first pair of shoes in sight onto my feet.
7:56 am
“SARAH!”
“COMING!” I don’t know why but when I say I’m coming she seems to interpret it as “I’m taking my sweet time” because two seconds after I make it pretty clear that I’m coming she will scream my name down the hall way again.
7:56 am
“SAARAH we’re leaving!” deciding that telling me three times in a row must make a huge difference on how fast it takes me to walk into the kitchen.
7:59 am
“Mom, are you ready? Lets go!” I tell her while I’m walking up stairs. Making it seem like I have been ready this whole time and she is the one who we are waiting on gives me a tiny bit of pleasure.
The walk from the house to the car is less of a walk and more of freezing cold adventure. Carrying my tea, my toast, my bag, my lunch bag, my shoes (on occasion), socks (on a rare occasion), and many more miscellaneous items such as unnecessary textbooks and readers, which we, the student population, are, forced to carry around all day at school. Just because the teacher wants us to bring them for the two minutes of class time where we follow along with one sentence from the text book as they read it out loud and are forced to shove the books into our lockers, if you are lucky and have a locker at a convenient location, for the rest of the day only to lug it home after school.
8:07 am
I throw every thing into the car sit on top of most of it slam the door closed and off we go to school. I wish. Somehow between the house and the car time suddenly speeds up and we are running late, again. My mom drives as fast as she possibly can without harming any one until we hit MLK. The main street that you follow straight to school, every time we are even five minutes late MLK goes from no traffic to impossible to drive through without wanting to swear and show your middle finger off to the incredibly stupid and slow drivers cutting you off every time you try to change lanes.
In short it takes an extra fifteen minutes than usual to get me to school leading to another tardy. I run into school hoping that the bell has not rung yet, but it has. Still rushing to my class on the third floor of the building the farthest away from where I get dropped off every morning I creep open the door and slickly slip into the classroom.
“Your late again, what is that now…three days in a row? Next time I’m sending you to OCI, On Campus Intervention. It used to be called On Campus Suspension but they decided it would scare the students away from actually going there when sent by teachers.
7:30 pm
The phone rings.
“Hello?”
“This is Berkeley High calling to notify you that your student seerah had one or more tardies on Tuesday April 16th. Please discuss these tardies with your child.”
“SARAH! You got a tardy call! What class did you skip?”
Brilliant.