A Funny Thing Happened on the way to School (Dateline: April 2005)

I was taking my kids to school the other day, twenty miles one way at O-dark-thirty. First stop to off-load two of them... Kisses! Waves!! Goodbye, goodbye!! See you this afternoon!

The second stop is Luc’s school across town. He attends a Special Ed class five days/week (sort of like a special ed preschool, where they teach life skills to special needs kids.) Can’t beat it - probably the only fully funded school program in the state! Luc gets to go swimming, attends concerts, visits museums, eats at McDonald’s. And, they potty trained him! What a deal!!

Anyway, I’m parked in front of the school, scouting for early buses (because my husband has the “Handicapped” sticker and I don’t want toP*ss off any more bus drivers (long story). As we get out of the car, and I unload the stroller out of the back of the car, a lady passes by and I hear ‘Hi Luc!” I look up in time to see my son waving madly at a woman I have never seen before.

I finally get him loaded into the stroller (his wheel chair is left at school) and work my double handed magic trick of getting a stroller through doors with no handicapped button, and escape getting wacked in the back of the head just in time to hear: “Hi Luc!” This time it’s the school maintenance man. “When we gonna race again? I’m gonna beat you next time!” He calls as he rounds the corner. I look down at my son and he is waving madly at the disappearing man.

Half way down the hall way a group of girls passes by and giggle at me, “Hi Luc! Hi Hi!!”

Who ARE these people? And why do they know my son?

I finally drop him off in his class (Hi Luc!) and off to work I go. Later that morning I'm talking to a nurse who’s been job shadowing me. We get to talking and I mention that I have six (!) kids at two different schools. She mentions that one of the other nurses she works with helps out withswim lessons at the Civic Center for several special needs kids. (Small world, thinks me). Then she mentions that just the other day this nurse mentioned this handsome little boy from Taiwan that she helps with (somewhere in the back of my head I hear “Hi Luc!”).

So, query me this Bat Man - how does my six year old son whose only been in the country for six months, who can’t get around with out assistance, know so many people? And they keep getting these goofy smiles on their faces when they talk about him...

Must be the potty training, I think.

Then again, maybe not. Probably the full body giggle.

My son Luc. He’s going places. You have been warned.

Love from Buckley,
Six kids (Hi Luc!), five cats, 5000 red-wing black birds and two mating pairs of starlings...Life is good.