Grade School Dad Part 2

My wife had previously informed me that I and my son would be spending the following Sunday picking up trash along the neighborhood roads and then cleaning the school. As a rookie grade school dad, I asked a veteran mom I had met at my lifeguarding stint what would be going down. I'll paraphrase her reply as, "Absolute hell." She told me that only about 20% of the parents bothered to attend and that peasants during the Tokugawa Period enjoyed lighter workloads than those parents stupid enough to show for the Clean Campaign.

I swore a sacred oath to spend my next summer far from Japan and headed out with Ray for the meeting point at the community hall near the bus stop. Along the way we met a grade school mom and her son. Mom reported that no parents had congregated at the community hall and my deepest fears seemed realized--only mad dogs and chumps turned up to clean the school during the midsummer heat of southern Japan.

But then a pickup truck pulled up and we learned that our meeting point was not at the present bus stop, but at a previous bus stop about a half a mile up the road. We clambered into the bed of the pickup truck and headed up to the end of the the road to meet the rest of the work crew. We picked up our garbage bags and began ambling back toward the school. Ray and I were in the middle of the pack and there was little trash to be found. I wondered if my status as a father would suffer if Ray and I handed in an empty garbage bag.

The School Pool

The School Pool, originally uploaded by bink_d.

Grade School Dad

Summer vacation is upon us, but the grade school dad has a few obligations to fulfill. First up is a 2 hour stint as a lifeguard at the school pool. During vacation the pool remains open and teachers and parents come together to control the mayhem in the pool. The teacher runs the show, while the parents patrol the pool-side, ready to pounce on rule-breakers and rescue those in need. The good: a glass of well-chilled mugi-cha (what tea) and kudos from the teaching staff. The bad: there"s not much to do and time passes slowly. It's hot and sweaty, but not in a good way. The ugly: as a parent lifeguard you are NOT permitted to swim in the pool. You're child may be cool and refreshed, but you are not.