It could be worse: You could love school

Penny Scruples is a strange child. Don't get me wrong, she is a bright and brilliant young lady with a zest for life. But what makes her odd and sets her apart is this — she loves school.

She's been known to jump for joy as summer vacation winds down. She's rumored to giggle and laugh as she picks out school supplies. Worse yet, she approached the end of Christmas vacation with glee and happily announced to anyone she met that a new semester was about to dawn and that she was giddy with anticipation.

Is that not just weird?

Things are not quite the same at our household. Although our kids take their school responsibilities seriously, they mourn the end of their summer vacation. They loathe the idea of school supplies and as the end of Christmas break drew nigh, they hung their heads, fell prostrate on the floor and cried out for mercy.

For the sake of sports, they rarely miss a day, but there is one among them who gets creative with his attendance now and then. He is imaginative and inspired, and for him a sick day is a tasty treat and a day at home with Mom can only be compared to a minivacation.

The little dear has been known to show up in the school office with an illness of one sort or another. He states that his head hurts, his stomach aches, and although he's not quite certain, he feels that his nose may be about to become stuffy.

He can pretend to suffer from great ailments and by re-creating the Great Flu of 2006, he can conjure up some pretty good images.

I'm famous around here for telling the kids to tough it out and go to school even if all is not well in the bodies that they so happily occupy. But when the school calls and says that one is sick, I feel like a bad mom if I say, "Tell him to suck it up."

This particular young man of mine came home three times in a span of as many weeks, and although he may not have been Johnny-The-Happy-Cracker, I doubted that he was sick enough to warrant leaving school.

In a recent sick day, I gave him a lecture and I felt it was a good one. I quoted dates, statistics and pointed out that he had missed more school in the last quarter than all three of his brothers had in the last four years!

It wasn't even a week before the school secretary called and said she had a sick one in the office. Once again I drove to the school to collect my afflicted. As I sat in the car, my little dear walked out with his head cocked to the side.H

e paused for a moment to see if I was looking and then gave it his all, and while I'm not one to brag, I feel his performance was worthy of an Emmy. He was walking slowly, arms limp, gait slow and the whole spittin' match. Why he even paused for a moment to sigh before he climbed into the car.

Once he was buckled up, he saw the look on my face and he said, "Mom, it wasn't my fault this time. Get this! I'm in music and Ms. Melody says, 'Hey, you look pale.' I didn't know I was pale until she told me that I was pale. So then I went back to class and my teacher asked me if I was feeling well, and then she said that I looked pale. Well, then I got to thinking that maybe I am pale. Now I ask you, is that my fault? I mean you wouldn't want me to stay in school if I was pale, now would you?"

As I drove back home, I lectured him about many things up to and including, "It's wintertime, we're all pale!" I then sat him on a couch with nothing to do but stare at the wall and ponder his paleness.

"Do you think that it's normal that Penny Scruples loves school so much?" he asked me later.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because," he responded, "I think she's sick in the head."

Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of the book "Are We There Yet?" You can reach her at www.loriclinch.com.