Just in time

Today, practicing the JIT (just in time) method of accomplishing anything, I showed up in my son's classroom half a minute before the scheduled start of the lesson in which I was participating.

Three other moms and I, along with my son's teacher, were leading book groups. Come to find out, the teacher thought I had done this before so she assigned me the largest group. I hadn't. I knew all the kids but one in the group, though, from camp, scouts, or the past (same class with my son for three years prior).

They were all lovely, thoughtful, interested, willing, silly, and eager children: I put on my appreciation goggles on when I sat down at the literature table. (In fact, maybe I put them on when I walked through the door. When I signed in and the ladies in the office answered my "good morning," I told them "yes, it is a lot better than it was the first time I was here!")

My son and I sat next to each other at the table with our feet touching.

One of our vocabulary words from the reading was "promptly."

I took the opportunity to use it in context. "I do what mommy asks promptly."

My son and I exchanged glances. Then I looked around the table to see if this rang true for the other kids or if they had something to think about as well. A few of them had smirks of recognition.

"I arrived in the classroom today promptly at the appointed time."

"You were the last mom to get here."

"Yes, and I was right on time."