Household Word: Whose Homework?

 Somewhere there must be parents who don’t get involved in their kids’ homework assignments. They don’t run out for poster board at 11 p.m. or spend their evenings swabbing used tea bags on maps of the Silk Route. Somewhere there is a mother who has never glued cotton balls onto a diorama and a dad who has never inserted adjectives into an essay. There’s probably even a kid somewhere whose notebook is always organized and who has never left his backpack on the playground in the rain. The parents of those kids have never had to pen a note like this one I recently wrote to my son’s fourth-grade teacher.

Dear Ms. Crumb:


I’m sorry that Lewis was unable to complete last night’s homework assignment. He left his backpack in the school playground and forgot about it until after dinner. By that time it was dark. So before we could go look for the backpack, we had to find a flashlight. None of ours had batteries, so I swiped some slightly used ones from the remote control car that Lewis got for Christmas. We drove to the playground and it was a good thing we had that flashlight – the rain made it hard to see.


Still, we found Lewis’ backpack floating in a puddle under the swings. Fortunately, when we got home, we were able to pop the backpack into the dryer and peel apart most of the contents of his notebook.


Unfortunately, the assignment sheet you passed out in class wasn’t in the wad of soggy papers. Lewis agreed to call a classmate for the assignment. We spent nearly 15 minutes looking for the class phone list (it was taped on the fridge) and then dialed several classmates before we reached Emily, who had already completed the project. She had the assignment sheet and was able to read it over the phone. She offered to fax it as well, but I’ve never figured out how to work our fax machine.


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