Bad day as a parent

[JamesVincent]

I've had some bad days as a parent before. MaryKay's seizures, Alyssa's seizures, Chris' Lyme disease, various illnesses, sprains...... every day I spend in the same state as my ex. But I can honestly say today had the worst hour and a half I remember.

I left work early to get home before the bus got here to find out when the kids would be getting home. A little before 4pm the kids daycare called and said MaryKay was there but wasn't supposed to be. I asked if the twins were with her and they said no. So I called the middle school to ask when the twins were getting home so I could pick up Mary. They couldn't find the twins anywhere. No bus would answer that they had them, the bus they were supposed to be on didn't have them and the other bus for our neighborhood had already come and gone. So I sat on hold for over an hour with the school. Meanwhile the school came back on and said the bus garage had released the twins to their grandmother, which completely freaked me out. Then, a couple of minutes later, they said it was Alisha and Chris, not Alyssa and Chris.

Then they came back on and said a bus driver had dropped them off at a trailer park on the other side of Morehead. Then, a couple of minutes later, it wasn't them, it was another set of twins. Then the bus they were supposed to be on came through and didn't have them. Then, finally, at 5pm they came back on and said they had found them. A teacher had made them get on the wrong bus and that bus had dropped them off at Rodburn Elem., completely on the other side of town. They had sent another bus to pick them up and take them home. A little bit after 5 they finally got home.

I feel no shame that when they finally got home and I got them in the truck I was such a wreck I didn't do anything for 5 minutes but sit there and thank God they were home. Alyssa told me that they had been at that other school for an hour and that the bus had just left them. A teacher at the school had come out and they had let her know what had happened and she called the garage to tell them they were there. If she hadn't have been there no clue how we would have found them.

The really upsetting part? My work is directly across the street from that elementary school and they had gone past my work a little before 4pm, which is my normal time to leave. If I had not left early to meet them they could have gone straight to my work and met me there and there would have been no problems, except for fixing the fucknut teacher that told them to get on the wrong bus to start with.

[Gregg]

Sorry, OT, but do you live in Morehead, KY?

That's almost next to Argillite!

[notorial dissent]

James, I can't even begin to imagine what you were feeling at the time, but I can definitely understand your feelings at the end. Just unimaginable, and inexcusable. I'm so glad it was all happily resolved.

[Judge Roy Bean]

Two words: Cell phones.

And more words - child endangerment. Gross negligence. If the school district bans children from bringing cell phones to school, explain to those bozos what it will mean when they make another bad decision about the lives of the children they're responsible for.

[JamesVincent]

Sorry, OT, but do you live in Morehead, KY?

That's almost next to Argillite!

We moved to Morehead, Ky. last August Gregg. Actually been to Argillite when we were looking at houses in Greenup county.

I had a long talk with the principal of the twin's school Friday morning. What the problem boiled down to was that they had changed the bus schedules this year and some of the buses had different routes this year. The bus the teacher put my kids on went right past our house, last year. This year it goes to the elementary school that the kids ended up at. However, as I explained to him... kinda gently, that does not excuse the fact that the twins knew exactly what bus to get on and had come to the teacher looking for that bus. It also doesn't explain the fact that no one had given them a bus pass with their names and bus number on when they had asked which bus they were supposed to take.

He has assured me that the issues were going to be handled and fixed. And, sure enough, I got a call from the assistant principal later that afternoon. She informed me that she personally wrote out the bus pass and gave it to Alyss and that she would personally walk them to the bus.

It actually was harder to get my oldest girl straight since, according to the high school, no one puts high schoolers on a bus, they do it themselves. However, again, someone told Mary the wrong bus to get on. Fortunately they sent her to the day care I had used during the summer so I could work during the day. The day care called me to tell me that she was there, which made it more an inconvenience and nowhere near the issue that I had had with the twins. The counselor at the high school said she would make sure Mary knew where the bus was and would see that she got there. All three came home fine Friday afternoon.