Last year hubby and I started
looking for kindergartens to enroll our son in for this year. Being gay parents with an interracial child we
were cognizant of the fact that we would have to choose very carefully. We are not your typical …uhm… cookie cutter
family. We did not want our son to
experience intolerance or discrimination of any kind and we wanted him to be in
an environment that is open minded, conducive to empowering him and to be fully
integrated. Also, the school would have
to tolerate me. I have been told that I
am an overbearing parent with the potential of driving our son’s teachers completely
nuts. I am embarrassed to say that this
is totally true and accurate.
In this day and age there is still
discrimination prevalent and schools are not compelled to accept a child for
enrollment. They can decline an
application for any reason without providing you with an explanation. If you know me you will realize that this
makes me very uncomfortable and somewhat rebellious. I mean how any school could decline our
application would be a mystery. Sure we
are a gay couple with an interracial child, but this only makes us a fabulous
rainbow family. And I know all parents
think their children are the prettiest and smartest but in our case this is
undeniably true. Any school would be
doing themselves an injustice by letting an opportunity pass by to be graced
with our son’s presence. See this is
where the overbearing side manifests.
After a few phone calls a school
was recommended to us by my sister-in-law as her son was already attending
it. Granny and my sister-in-law were
already familiar with the school and we thought it would be nice if our son and
his cousin attending school at the same place.
The selling point of the school to me was the fact that they had a
petting zoo. It’s kind of a dream of
mine to have a petting zoo of my own, one day, which includes a rescued gay
donkey called Theodor the 3rd. I have
also daydreamed about quitting my job and joining Kazakhstan’s male
synchronized swimming team but some dreams will just stay that - dreams.
We phoned the school and made an
appointment with the principal for “the
interview”. The afternoon of the
interview we arrived at the school on time, which is rare these days. Our son has the ability to screw up our knack
for being punctual. We met the principal
and we started chatting. I could tell
that she was immensely impressed by our super smart and well behaved son. Well, that was until he started misbehaving
and chewing on things on her desk which I chose to ignore because if we didn’t
make an issue of it then hopefully she wouldn’t either. See this is where my years of studying
psychology finally came in handy in a non-professional setting. Either that or I was just lying to myself again. Something I do frequently as to not hurt my
own feelings. I never said I was totally
sane, now did I?
The first thing she asked us was if
our son was adopted and I was all like “No,
he is our biological son! Can’t you tell
that I am still struggling to lose the baby weight?” But I didn’t because I realized pissing off
the principal might not be the best way of getting our application
accepted. Then she brought up the
subject of us being gay and again I was all like “No, technically we are straight.
I was born female and had a sex change” but then I told myself to
shut the fuck up before what hubby has dubbed my “foot-in-mouth disease” screws this up for us.
We went through all the different
challenges that lay ahead of us as a gay couple raising an interracial
child. We discussed how the school will
handle it when our son starts to ask questions that could make people
uncomfortable, which he probably will if he takes after me. I fully expect our son to grow up to speak
his mind, be confident in himself and to call a spade a spade. If he has a slight case of foot-in-mouth
disease I will be proud. I would have
raised him well. The interview went glowingly,
mostly because I hardly spoke. I just
let all my paternal energy shine through and prayed that our son doesn’t break
anything expensive in her office. After
the interview she took us on a tour of the school.
We were shown where our son’s
class would be, met his teacher and was showed their play area. The teacher looked a bit timid and I remember
wondering if she would survive the first day with our son in her class. As we were shown the play area my parental
alarm system went haywire as I spotted sharp edges, steps and moveable pot
plants. I wanted to wrap the whole area
in padding because god forbids our son gets hurt. Then I remembered to just breathe and
centered myself. I also reminded myself
that I cannot wrap our son in bubble wrap and that getting hurt is part of
life. As long as no blood is drawn or
bones are broken because that is when I will lose my shit completely.
I was impressed with the school’s
security and the fact that they have CCTV cameras everywhere. Soon we will be able to log into our son’s
class’ cameras and will be able to watch what he is doing. The poor teacher’s life will never be the
same again after that. She can be
expecting quite a few texts and calls from me.
Our son started school a couple
of weeks ago and he seems to love it. He
is enjoying his friends and all the stimulation he is getting. In the afternoon I can see that he had a good
day because he is exhausted. His teacher
says that he is a very busy child (which in our house is also code for naughty)
but that generally he is a joy to have in her class. She is an excellent liar. On his first day she texted us that our son
was doing well and that he made friends.
I was happy to hear that and pleased that he was finally in a good
school. What the future holds no one
knows. Only time will tell but I really
think his teachers will start hating me once my true colors come out.
Till next time.
