It’s back to school time and you know what that means—conquering that immense stack of school forms before it conquers you.
Public schools say they are going green and then send home volunteer forms, medical forms, and forms on how to fill out forms.
The paperwork includes important information like the school calendar, which notes holidays such as Labor Day, a special holiday our government instituted so parents would have a day off from work to spend filling out school forms.
It also indicates special school events not to miss such as Portfolio Day. This is not an official holiday but one that guilts you into taking off from work to attend an event where your 3rd grader shares an entire year’s worth of his written work in ten minutes.
Then you haul the paperwork home and spend the remainder of the day debating what to do with it.
The extreme paperwork is known to cause Form Overload Epidemic, or FOE, an anxiety-related illness that occurs when your child returns home after the first day of school and dumps onto the kitchen counter a wheelbarrow full of letters marked, “To the parents of…” all due the next day.
FOE symptoms include an uncontrollable urge to set your hair on fire, throw yourself from a moving train, and home school.
FOE dates back to the invention of paper making around the 6th century B.S. (Before Staples) in Asia, when paper was first formed from pulp prepared from the fibers of mulberry, rice, seaweed and Nabisco Wheat Thins.
While the relationship between school forms and FOE is still a matter of scientific study, there is a growing understanding about the causes. For instance, some believe it’s simply a ploy by teachers to get students on their good side by letting them assign homework to their parents, just for fun.
Teacher: “So students, let’s rehearse this once more. Take this stack of forms home. When your parents ask, ‘Do you have any school homework?’ what are you going to say?”
Class: “No, but you do!”
Others believe forms are specifically designed to keep the school staff amused by asking for personal information like parents name, home address, and body weight, and questions like, “Do you have any special concerns about your child?” “Do you want to be room parent?” “Do you shave your bikini area?”
Efforts to go green aren’t powerful enough to counteract FOE. The answer is to go back to making paper from rice and seaweed and convert homework into sushi.
That way, when the teacher asks your son, “Where are your school forms?” he can reply,
“My parents ate my homework.”
Lisa, you CRACK me up! And i do not even have kids!
Glad you were tickled! 🙂
That is so true. I got a paper with their “back to school” forms that notified us of the changes made to keep the year “green” along with 2 handbooks consisting of 300,000,000 pages. (Maybe not quite that much, but it was pretty close).
I feel your pain!
I expect big pharma to begin launching FOE medications which will be advertised non-stop morning, noon and night…advertising several side effects including death. That being said, some may be willing to take that risk…
Ha! Let’s stay tuned . . .
Back to school night may not be far behind of FOE?! That is where you sit at those little desks and they give you another stack of paper! So much for save the trees!
They also COLLECT paper from you at back to school night. Unfortunately, it’s green and has a picture of Andrew Jackson on it.
And Brazillian wax is…—sending your instruction on how to set your hair on fire to those involved. I’ve lived through it. Very different in the past. Lucky if the teacher knew your kid was in the class.
What a wit!!
Babette
Thanks for waxing philosophical, Babs!
Hi, Lisa, This is your evil uncle sitting here plotting your downfall. I wonder what I will write about? I know! Soon. Uncle Gary
Why don’t you write about the time we were together and you ate chocolate and broke out in angry hives?
Great!
Teachers are evil tree-killing bastards! Ignorance for everyone! 😉 Too funny!
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