Attendance in the dojang is evidence of the start of the school year. Yesterday I taught a class with a single student (8 years old, and when he found out I was going to be his instructor, he burst into tears. Hopefully he now knows I’m not out to kill each and every student.) Today I had a class of just 4, all junior high aged kids and none of them wanted to be there.

I don’t exactly blame them. Alex was at the dojang but was in my office with his nose buried in homework and he never made it to his class. Between fatigue from having to get up early in the morning to getting back in the homework groove the classes normally filled with kids will probably be light for the next couple of weeks. That’s fine with me.

I’m not thrilled with having to get up at six in the morning, either.

Tomorrow when I drop the kids off (parochial school, they’re all on the same campus) I have to go into the office and do battle on Alex’s behalf. Last year he took geometry and had taken algebra in 8th grade; this year in spite of what he registered for, he was placed in pre-calculus and when he pointed out to the teacher that he was not ready for this course he was informed that it was a department decision and he would do just fine.

If Alex thought he had a remote chance of passing that class with higher than a C he would gut it out, but two days in he’s crying uncle. He needs to take algebra 2 first. Or he says he does, I’m taking his word for it. I looked at the textbook and it doesn’t look anything like math to me, but I also never made it past geometry.

I won’t admit it to Alex, but if that school was run by nuns, I’d send Char in and hide behind her. I survived parochial school up until 7th grade, when Sister Hubert Humphrey (I no longer remember her real name, but that’s who she looked like) cold cocked me in the face for sticking my finger in my mouth during communion. I still have a healthy fear of nuns. Priests I’m fine with, nuns make my junk shrivel.