Wine and Bylaws

Every couple of years, the PTA at the elementary school needs to update its bylaws. The process is positively byzantine, with regulations up the hoohah. Among the arbitrary requirements is that the updating be done by a committee of five...even though it's essentially a task for two people, three at most.

And so last night five of us board members gathered at the home of Em's kindy teacher--who's been on the PTA for more than a decade, even though her boys left the school a few years back--to slog through the changes and questions. Or, rather, three of us slogged through the changes and questions while the other two cut a couple of hundred ribbons for Red Ribbon Week.

I love meetings at KT's house--not just because it's close to mine, but because her husband is adorable and he always greets us with good wine poured into brandy snifters.

It took two snifters-full to get through the bylaws last night. Today, my head aches. But hey. Whatever gets you through the night, right?

Frankly, it wasn't that bad. By the end of the session, we'd mostly degenerated into gossiping and laughing. And laughing and gossiping. And did I mention the wine...and the fact that my friend M, our PTA president, was our designated driver? So there was laughing and gossiping and DRINKING...which then led to more laughing and gossiping.

At one point, M asked me how the job was going.

"I'll tell you guys what I tell everyone," I said. "I love the work; I hate working."

"I hear you," said M, who is a resource teacher at a different school from the one our kids attend.

"I just hate not being there after school," I went on. "I hate not being able to grab the teachers to ask them a quick question. I hate not being able to go into the classrooms and volunteer on a weekly basis. I hate not picking N up from speech so I can check on how he's doing. I hate not running into Mrs. Computer Lab Teacher to find out what's going on in her room." My voice was rising into a whine as I went on...and on. Finally, I said, without realizing what I was saying until it had been said, "I just hate...not being able to micromanage my children's lives!"

[I'd like to say that the laughter that followed was the biggest laugh of the night, but that would be lying. It was big, and it was long, and there was much wiping of tears from eyes, especially mine. But it wasn't the biggest laugh. What was the biggest laugh was when we had somehow wandered into talking about hand sanitizers and the hygiene hypothesis, and KT began talking about the kids in her kindy class this year.

"All I can tell you is that these kids will come up to me and say, 'Mrs. KT, will you hold my hand?' And I'm all 'No way! You spend half your time with that finger up your nose...and the other half with your hand down in your pants. Forget it!'"

Ah, snifters of wine. My truth serum of choice.]