My wife, Carissa, and I both work outside the home. That
means that at the end of each school year, when the number of opportunities for
parental participation at school functions increases exponentially, the number
of opportunities for us to fail at parenting increases exponentially as well.
Spring musical performances, class field days, class field
trips, end-of-year class parties . . . so many opportunities! This year we
somehow managed to miss most if not all of them because, well, we had other shit to do. Fortunately, our 14-year-old
was completely chill with our parenting failure. She's just not that into us, to be honest. But her seven-year-old sister was less
forgiving. And by “less forgiving” I mean that she worked herself into a
furious rage that erupted into a fit of self-righteous indignation over her absentee parental units. A meltdown for the ages. Her general grievance appeared to be that everyone else’s
parents came to every single school functions while her parents were pathetic neglectful losers.
This is the long explanation for how I recently found myself
in front of 22 first-graders with 20 minutes to talk to them about my job. I
was slotted into the 11:30 a.m. opening on the Thursday of “career week” at my
daughter’s school. Game on.
It should have been Carissa. She is under almost all circumstances much better suited than me at any form of public communication. She is engaging and dynamic. I am awkward and never quite sure what to do with my hands. But she is a senior executive at a
national non-profit organization in D.C., and, well, her job is wonky and difficult to explain if you’re
not deeply immersed in the arcane technical world of education policy. It's not
just first-graders who glaze over when she has to explain her job. I don’t even
know exactly what she does, except that she travels a lot and has a fancy
office. When people ask me what my wife does for work I usually tell them
she works in the adult entertainment industry which helps eliminate follow-up
questions.
In other words the job of not failing as parents by showing up for career week fell to me. Which was not ideal. Not only am I awkward in front of people, I’m a lawyer for the government. Not a cowboy or an ice cream truck driver. I'm not even some hot shot federal prosecutor
bringing down corrupt politicians and international drug cartels. More like the
kind of government lawyer who spends a lot of time talking to his clients on conference calls, editing
documents on his computer, and reading and writing email at his desk. Hey kids, how many of you are familiar with
PowerPoint! Telephone mute button, the greatest invention in the history of the
world – am I right! Hey, raise your hand if you’ve ever filled out a Doodle
Poll! Who likes to Webinar! Show of hands: WestLaw or LexisNexis?
That’s pretty much my work life right there. That and Casual Fridays.
Still, it’s not like I walked into the deal empty handed. My
job is to represent federal agencies that restore natural resources injured by
oils spills or releases of hazardous materials. I might be a glorified desk
jockey, but my clients have amazing jobs. So I slapped together a slide show of
photos spotlighting oil spilling from a wrecked oil tanker, oiled beaches, oiled
pelicans and sea otters (charismatic mega-fauna, as we say in the business), along
with scientists cleaning oil from charismatic mega-fauna and beaches.
I muddled my way through the presentation and probably didn’t
embarrass my daughter in any lasting way. But I certainly made some rookie mistake. So I did what trauma victims sometimes do. I poured myself a tall glass of
bourbon and compiled a short list of lessons learned. Out of an abundance of generosity, my friends, I now share
my hard-earned knowledge with you.
- Lesson 1: Control the
room. It’s one thing to negotiate with high-priced corporate litigators. It’s
an entirely different and more difficult thing to engage a room full of
seven-year-olds. My basic mistake was to ask open-ended questions and to
encourage them to interrupt with their own questions and comments. Holy shit
was that a mistake. I had inadvertently invited a non-ending cycle of kids
sharing any random thought that entered their developing minds. I started out
explaining what lawyers do, how sometimes companies make mistakes and pollute
the environment, and then there are legal consequences. I barely was into my
opening statement when hands went up. Yes,
you in the front, you have a question? Rosa Parks was arrested. Yes, that’s true. Thanks you. What about you
in the red shirt? Smoking is pollution. Yes. OK, another hand. You, in the back. Smoking is bad for your
lungs. Um,yes, absolutely true. Anyone else? Did the Titanic spill oil when it sank? Wow. Tough crowd. I think it was a steam ship? So maybe it lost some coal? Anyway, moving on . . .Bottom line: don’t let the inmates set the agenda.
- Lesson 2: Bring swag. I solicited advice from friends before my first career week gig. One thing a lot of people told me I should do is tell the kids that I’m a fireman or asronaut. They also said pass out candy or stickers or something cool. That’s a good idea, I thought, but I never got around to doing that. Because I have a job. I barely have time to stop by the liquor store. How am I expected to track down candy and stickers? Besides, I had prepared a slide show with oiled otters and pelicans. At home that night after my presentation, I asked my daughter how I did and she told me I’d earned a solid B. You know who rated an A from my daughter? The investment banker mom who works with developers who construct apartment complexes. WTF, right? Why does a banker building apartments get an A while a lawyer who saves mega-fauna from corporate polluters earns a B? Because the banker brought foil-wrapped chocolate coins to explain her job. Never forget: Kids dig swag.
- Lesson 3: Know the competition: If possible find out in advance from your kid or her teacher who the other parents presenting to the class will be.Then you’ll have a better idea about how much effort you’ll need to put into your presentation. I went in cold. Not a good idea. Didn't do my homework. Didn’t know there would be a banker with chocolate coins. I also learned (too late) that there was a city planner who created his own Monopoly game to teach kids about zoning, a physical therapist who talked about muscles and how they work, and a doctor who surgically repaired a stuffed toy and let kids play with her stethoscope. The coolest parent, according to my daughter, was the dad who is some sort of forensic investigator who explained his job with a story plot that involved stolen cookies and then shared cookies with the class as they helped him solve the mystery. Total dick move. He’s probably the same guy who gives his kid a pony for her birthday and takes his wife to Paris for their anniversary. Slow down, cowboy, it’s career week at Wood Acres Elementary, not the freaking Super Bowl. Take away: Do not underestimate parents who participate in career week.
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