Laze-E & PE

Once upon a time there was an apple who succumbed to gravity & fell off the tree, hit the ground with extreme force & velocity, rolled way down a very long hill and landed next to a cow patty somewhere in Bauer Fritz’s pasture. This particular apple fell very, very far from the mama apple tree.

Yep, Laze-E’s report card showed up in the mail yesterday.

Man comes bee-bopping in the door after another day of being the colonel’s PowerPoint slide bitch a long, hard day's work & announces that there’s an F (yes, the 6th letter of the alphabet & 5th letter of the conventional grading system) on Laze-E’s report card.

I looked at him and awaited the expected punch line. The one that goes something like, “Nah, it’s all wonderful. All A’s and one B. Great Job, E.”

Seriously, I thought he was joking because she’s my A/B student. OK, mostly B’s, but that has more to do with enthusiasm than ability. Man hands over the offending piece of paper, and there it is.

A big, fat, flippin’ F.

On her PE final exam.

Admittedly, she’s a little clutsy & if we are going to be brutally honest, athletic aptitude is not one of her God-given gifts. And, granted, we aren’t exactly the family whose schedule is chocked full of sports practice and games. We Rockin'Bauers are more the kind of people to participate in non-competitive walking and reward ourselves with bratwurst and bier afterwards. Prost!

But, come on. Even the SpEd kids who ride the short bus (yeah, I know, she does ride the short bus) don’t get F’s in physical education. It’s really just a participation grade, n’est-ce pas?

When asked about this monstrosity of a grade, Laze-E lies like a rug innocently responds that she has no idea why the grade looks like it might have belonged on one of Man's report cards is so low. There were a few questions on the exam and to her knowledge she answered most of them correctly. Yeah, I believed that about as much as I believe that skinny chicks are genetically programed for bodacious ta-tas.

Did she forget that HausFrau knows a bit about how middle school works? This ain’t mommy’s first rodeo, cupcake, so start talking. I know that you know why there’s an F on your permanent record.

Shockingly, the truth is that Laze-E and her friend, MotorMouth, were talking to each other during the exam. Apparently, the PE teacher didn’t like that much & took their tests away. Ok, I totally understand getting all pissy allowing negative consequences when students don’t take their dumbass junior high electives academic careers seriously. I’ve even been known to play the My-Class-is-Ūber-Importante-and-Thou-Shalt-Not-Talk-During-a-Test hardball, but I never got away with slapping an F on a report without first getting approval from school administrators and congress notifying the parents.

So, this most offensive report card shows up yesterday and the little darling is upstairs packing right now because the bus to Italy Beach Week leaves in 3 hours. Yeah, I know. F in PE and I fork over the moola for her to tan on the beach in Italy for 6 days. I’m probably raising a criminal defense attorney truck stop waitress here.

On the bright side, this gives me a week to determine how to appropriately handle and F in PE.

(Hey, if you have any brilliant suggestions, just hit the comment button. It’s easy & I’d love to hear from you! Note: we are talking about an F on the exam, she ended up with a B for the semester & the teacher never said boo to me about it. And, in Laze-E's defense, she did fess up. Oh, and Beach Week is technically church camp. Does that matter?!)

Since, I’m all over torturing the offenders making the punishment fit the crime, I’m leaning toward signing her up for both the community softball AND soccer teams. If they can’t use her as a ball fetcher, outfielder, goalie or quarterback, maybe, just maybe, they are in need of a sports announcer with a forte for teen gossip & melodrama.