Janne Drangsholt - The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter

“Hey, Ingrid, it says on the calendar in here that there’s a meeting for the PTA’s executive board. Did you remember that?”

“Oh, no! Is that today?”

I rinsed the shampoo off my hands and ran downstairs.

“When does it start?”

“Three minutes ago.”

“Argh!”

I yanked the bike keys off the shelf and pedaled down to the school without braking even once. Everyone looked up as I burst through the door.

“Sorry,” I said to no one in particular and flopped down into the closest chair. “Sorry, I was in the middle of putting the kids to bed, busy day, logistics and stuff.”

The PTA president, Martine, smiled disingenuously.

“Now we have a quorum,” she announced. “Everyone’s here except the principal, who’s sick. Assistant Principal Per Henrik is standing in for him.”

Per Henrik nodded, not very enthusiastically, and I tried to give him a look that was meant to show that I knew exactly how he felt.

“The first item of business,” Martine continued, “is our national holiday, the 17th of May. We have a representative here from last year’s 17th of May committee. She’s going to tell us a little about how the festivities were handled in the past and give us some suggestions for areas we can improve on this year.”

“It’s only November,” I objected.

“But it’s a children’s holiday and the PTA is responsible for the festivities,” Martine said.

“And to be clear,” the woman from last year’s committee said, “the 17th of May celebrations don’t just happen by themselves. Last year my whole family and my mother-in-law ended up manning the food station because no one would volunteer. We didn’t get home until ten p.m. Ten p.m.! Even my mother-in-law. Plus, all the sacks for the sack race fell apart after a half hour, and the prizes for the fishing game were all junk that the kids didn’t want. Some of them even threw their prizes at the grown-ups. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them are still out on disability from that. Not to mention that I’ve heard from reliable sources that the best prizes have already been snatched up.”

“Who snatched them up?” I asked.

“Other schools. Some of the PTAs are so organized that they started gathering prizes for this year’s 17th of May celebrations on May 18 last year. So, well, you can see for yourselves that we’re already playing catch-up.”

“Huh,” I said and leaned over my notepad, where a drawing of a hobbit was beginning to take shape.

An alternate I’d never seen before raised her hand.

“Yes?”

“I’m the alternate representative for the third grade and admittedly I’ve never attended one of these meetings before, but I have actually done a lot of work with ergonomics, occupational safety, and regulatory compliance in the community. And planning for the 17th of May is all well and good, but I think maybe it’s an even bigger problem that the children at this school are not receiving enough help tying their shoes.”

“Why don’t we discuss that when we get to the ‘other items of business’ line on the agenda?” Martine suggested. “Because I promised—”

“What I’d like to pin down is what type of measures the school is planning to implement,” the alternate interrupted, “and at the same time discuss whether the PTA board ought to have responded to the situation sooner.”

Everyone looked over at Assistant Principal Per Henrik.

“Well,” he said, “are you thinking about shoe tying in general?”

“Yes, actually I am. In general and in specific. My son, for example, does not get any help tying his shoes. And do you know what his teacher said? That we should buy him shoes with Velcro closures because the school doesn’t have the ‘capacity’ to tie the children’s shoes.”

“Yes, ahem,” said Martine. “I would’ve thought that maybe—”

“Ca-pa-ci-ty,” the alternate repeated, glaring at the assistant principal.

“Well, it is true,” Per Henrik explained, “that we encourage parents to teach children to tie their own shoes before they begin school. But Velcro is a good alternative if the child hasn’t mastered the skill.”

“What did you say?” the alternate asked.

“If the child hasn’t mastered the skill of tying his own shoes.”

“Are you suggesting that he can’t do it?”

“You just said that he can’t do it,” Martine said with a smile.

“This is nothing to smile about!” the alternate yelled. “This is an admission of failure on the school’s part!”

A box of candies was slowly making its way around the table, but at the word failure it stopped. I closed my eyes and tried to brace myself for what was about to come.

And what was about to come was a comprehensive list of the pet peeves each individual PTA representative was harboring, everything from how much snow was permissible on the approach to the school before it needed to be shoveled or plowed to how unreasonable it was that the fourth grade was allowed to use the soccer field only once a week. There was so much to discuss that we probably could have kept going for hours and days if the alternate hadn’t finally blown her top and demanded that someone from the administration “take charge of the shoelace issue.”

“But all you need to do is teach him to—” began Per Henrik.

“I’m going to see to it that your refusal to accept responsibility for this situation is recorded in the minutes,” she growled, “and then I demand that someone contact the city!”

“I suppose that’s possible,” Martine said. “Off the top of my head I don’t recall who our liaison with the city is.”

The secretary started flipping back and forth through the minutes until she found the list.

“It’s… Winter? Ingrid Winter?” she reported as if asking a question.

“That’s me,” I said. “But I don’t recall being city liaison.”

“Great!” Martine exclaimed, relieved. “Then you’ll take the ball on this.”

“Uh, what ball?”

“The shoelace-tying issue. We’ll put that on the agenda for the next meeting.”

“Perhaps we can just include it under ‘other matters of business,’” Per Henrik suggested tentatively, “because we probably ought to avoid turning it into its own separate issue.”

The alternate snorted and crossed her arms defiantly.

“Hush it up, sure,” she said in a huff.

“No,” protested Per Henrik. “I’m not hushing anything up, but it’s important that—”

“What kind of person are you, anyway?” she interrupted. “And why are you even here to begin with?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is the whole school entitled to be represented at these meetings? I thought this was the parent-teacher executive committee. Not really something for the administration, you see? And you don’t even have any children at this school, do you?”

“No, I’m here in my capacity as—”

“Then I think maybe we ought to take a vote on whether or not we think it’s a good idea to have you sitting here telling us what to do, telling us that the well-being of our children somehow isn’t the responsibility of the PTA.”

“But I didn’t—”

“Can I see a show of hands? All those in favor ?”

“I think maybe as president I should—” Martine began, but the alternate stopped her by raising her hand.

“I repeat: all those in favor of parents looking after their children’s interests, raise your hands now .”

Although many of the representatives took this opportunity to stare at the table, just barely a majority were still feeling the uneasiness from the use of the expression admission of failure , which ten seconds later resulted in the alternate watching in triumph as the assistant principal packed up his things and stepped out into the hallway.