Story of the Day 8/ 16/ 2012 #2

Just before going to bed, I checked my email.
That is a stupid thing to do.
I know it is a stupid thing to do.
So why did I do it?
I am stupid.

On Facebook, I had a message. Now, you might be snooty and think that checking Facebooook is not checking my emial, but you are wrong. This is because it is the only email /messaging link I have for a few people. For two of my nieces, for one ex( now grown) foster kid, and for another young man who used to live with us.
He is 18. An adult.
And he sent me a message.
Am I coming to his case conference.

If you do not know what a case conference is, we have nothing in common.
That is because for the past two decades, my life has revolved around them.
These are the meetings you have with your kids' schools to set up and maintain the special education services.
I have been to hundreds of them.
At least.

I maintain my sanity by not counting them.

I have attended them for my children, for the children who have lived with us and were temporarily ours, for friends, and , for several years as a parent advocate for an agency that has a grant from the Department of Education.

I no longer work for that agency. I no longer attend case conferences a sa parent advocate.

I left that job because after years of having a supervisor who screamed and was bit of an anti-Semite ( and when I mean screamed, she never screamed at me, but I had a number of parents tell me that she had screamed at them on the phone when they called for information, and other advocateds told me the same), we got a new supervisor, who was, we though, better; until she decided that Jesus was part of the office. The office that gets public Department of Education dollars.
And I do not work for Jesus.
So I left.


Now, I attend case conferences for my daughter, for my good friend's child, and on a very , very rare instance, for a child who used to live with us .
After all, as a friend observed, some of us have more than one mother. And you never walk away from that job.

So, I had a Facebook message asking if I was coming to this young man's conference.
And he wasn't on Facebook. Which is good.
If he was, I would have needed to yell at him ( via Facebook) to get to bed, since it was a school night.

But what conference and when is the conference?
Is it tomorrow morning? Do I need to be up and dressed and headed somewhere at 7 AM or 7:30 AM and I don't know about it?
I message him.
Why am I messaging him, he is off Facebook, that isn't going to help!

It is 11 PM.

I call his mother.
I wake her up.
Crap.

At least the conference is not tomorrow morning.

It is next Tuesday.
At 8:30 AM; so, on that day, I will need to be nicely dressed ( heck, I might even comb my hair), and out the door at 7:30 AM.
But , at least, it is not tomorrow.

I check the calendar.
Heck, I didn't' really want to go to the doctor, next Tuesday.

I tell her to let her son know that I will be there.
Then I leisurely send him another message on Facebook and ask what he wants from the school and the school year.

I almost add, "And , next time, call me!"
But I realize he might have.
He only has my home phone number, and I wasn't home, and we don't' have an answering machine, and the kid I left at home ( the one who called that the tickets were still sitting on the dining room table) is deaf and probably only stuck his hearing aids on long enough to make the one call to me, then took them out and went back to being unable to hear the phone ringing.

And , whatever other mothers say in complaining bout Facebook, I am sure that God invented it , just like she invented Google.
For the mothers of teenagers.