Son had school yesterday, but he didn’t go.
The attendance office left me a message: “Please call. Your son was out today. Leave a message with his name, his teacher and why he was absent.”
I called. “His name is Emmett Pearlman. Fifth grade, Mrs. Bennett. This is his dad, Jeff. He missed school today because, well, I took him to Disneyland. So … hey.”
So … hey.
Life is short. Childhood passes in a flash. Whatever he was going to learn yesterday couldn’t possibly be as important as a random fun dad with Dad, riding Space Mountain and the Runaway Train and a bunch of other rides that made me somewhat dizzy and a tad sick.* Emmett and I shared an ice cream sundae, cruised two parks (California Adventure and Disneyland), laughed and screamed and had, truly, a wondrous time. If you’re a parent, and you have the opportunity, you have to—100 percent have to—surprise your children every so often with a wake-up tune of, “Hey, kid, you’re not going to school today. Instead we’re doing [fill in the blank with something awesome] …”
Again, childhood is quick.
Don’t let it pass without pausing.
* Unless yesterday’s lesson was “How to survive the Trump presidency.”
