After only one week, my kids are already picking up things that I neglected to teach them at home. The other day I was getting a pair of scissors out of the drawer and Caleb reached out, took my wrist and tilted it downward saying, “Unh-unh, Mom. Scissors always have to be pointed at the floor.” I asked, “Is that one of the rules you learned at school?” He nodded proudly.
It’s not like I was letting them use scissors as weapons or swords or anything, but aside from the “don’t run with the scissors!” that I probably yelled out once or twice, I don’t think we had any scissor rules except for the one about only cutting your own hair.
I’m now realizing there are a few other things that all good citizens are supposed to know that I might have neglected to tell them. At dinner one night the big news of the day was the fire alarm going off and they all had to evacuate. Calvin said, “Mom, it was crazy. The fire alarm went off and everyone put down their books and walked outside.”
(Me, trying to figure out the strange part): ??Huh??
Calvin, in an incredulous tone says, “I don’t know why they weren’t all running. It could have been a fire!”
After I stopped laughing long enough to catch my breath and wipe my tears, I gasped out, “Baby, that’s what you’re supposed when there is a fire because if everyone panics and starts running then people might get hurt. It does make sense that if there was a fire, you’d want to get out as fast as possible, but they want everyone to be safe so you have to walk.”
Thankfully he walked calmly outside with the rest of the class because “that’s what everyone else was doing.” Score 1 for peer pressure. I guess the common sense home rule of “get out of the house as fast as possible” doesn’t quite translate to a classroom situation.
The moral of the story is if you’re ever in a building with my boys and the fire alarm goes off, you better be faster than they are or they might run you down from behind and shiv you with a pair of scissors as they race out of the building. Don’t blame them. Their mother didn’t teach them anything.