School's In

Today my beautiful, brilliant daughter enrolled in her new, public school out in God's Country.



It's one of her mother's alma mater's, kind of. Squirt is in 8th grade, but the junior high building there is the former high school building. She has a brand new, state of the art, ginormous high school to look forward to in a couple of years.

Her principal is an old classmate and friend of her mother, and I've already had to point out to her that his first name is Mister, not Dee.

She called me and gave me her list of classes: AP Literature and AP Language (natch), (regular) Math, Earth Science, American History, Life Skills (new millenium Home Ec) and P.E.

She chose the regular math as opposed to the AP Math because "it could be hard, Daddy!"

So...I gave her one of those talks with her...

Plus, she's going to find out that lockers, changing classes, a 10 point grading system (90-100, not 93-100), school dances and drug tests aren't the only differences between private and public school. She's going to be a bit ahead of her classmates. The teacher to student ration is good at the new school, but not nearly what she has been used to.

She'll be fine. She'll be the same kind of social hybrid anomoly that both her mother and I were in school. Her mom was the drop dead gorgeous, smart as a whip popular girl that everyone wanted to be near. I was everybody's favorite goofball genius who got along with everyone, from jocks to the socially off-the-radar 'freaks' (I was, and am, I suppose) a combination of all of them.

She's already made the cheerleading squad and qualified for a national award through summer cheer camp. So, she's starting off with a leg up than I did when we moved around with the wind thanks to the oil field back in the day.

I may discuss my transition to her move here soon. I'm still deep in the middle of a combination of stark denial and stark-raving freakout.

I'll keep you posted.