When I first started working at the Montessori school in California I had, in my group of 12 kids, 2 brothers. We’ll call these two Derek and Dylan.
Now, first of all, Derek and Dylan couldn’t have been picked out of a line-up as brothers even if there were only one other person in it. Derek was 4, tall for his age, blond and blind as a bat without his glasses. Dylan was 2, of short stocky build, had no neck and dark hair. But unbeknownst to me, there was another issue of which I would soon become painfully and embarrassingly aware.
That fateful day stands out starkly and brightly in my memory. I remember it like it was just yesterday………………..
We were out in the courtyard doing a bit of gardening, me and a group of 8 or 10 kids; just enjoying some late summer/early fall weather. Some kids were weeding, some were dead heading the rose bushes and the younger ones were watering the container plants with teeny tiny plastic watering cans. Of course the younger ones were sloshing water mostly on each other and themselves, but we were all having a really good time.
Well near the end of the day this gentleman comes out the back door into our little beehive of activity. He was a cross between Colonel Sanders, a cowboy and a hippie. With long white hair down to his shoulders, a Colonel Sanders mustache and beard and a dark blue tie dyed head band. He was wearing a dark blue plaid cowboy shirt complete with mother-of-pearl snaps down the front, jeans with a belt buckle the size of a dinner plate and fabulous cowboy boots with shiny silver toe tips. This man was not as odd looking as it sounds, he had a presence about him and was rather attractive for an old dude.
Anyway, he comes over to me and says ‘Hi, I’m here to get Derek and Dylan.’
‘Oh, ok’ I say as I turn to Derek and say ‘Derek honey can you go dry off your brother and get your stuff together, your grand-pa is here for you’ the words are just out of my mouth when I hear a soft cough behind me and the old dude says, ‘Actually I’m their dad’………………..
Yeah, exactly………………..
Ok so fast forward 20+ years and here’s my dream………………..
I get to the school to pick up my little darling and I approach the new classroom aid who is probably about 15 and so fresh out of school that not just behind her ears is wet. I walk up to her and say ‘Hi, I’m here to pick up Junior Walters’ and she turns to my child and says ‘Junior, get your things together honey, grand-ma’s here for you’………………..
I’m just saying, it could happen and it would just be karma at its best…………………
Oh, and by the way, that man was not really Derek and Dylan’s father. As it turns out, they’re mom told me years later, she had been artificially inseminated. For Derek she had selected donor sperm from a man with a high IQ and for Dylan she had selected donor sperm from an athlete. So I guess karmic-ly speaking my punishment is not fitting. Life is not fair.
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