When I was in high school we had the greatest attendance policy. Our academic calendar was set up in semesters, and as students we were allowed 10 unexcused absences per semester. Unexcused absences would be defined as days where you missed and your mo-ph’d sk (inside joke), but you had no official medical documentation excusing your absence. In my mind, this made those ten unexcused absences essentially equal to personal days. And personal days did I take.
I can still recall my senior year that I had 17 unexcused absences. Close to the limit, and enough to land me in Wednesday Evening Learning Lab–or W.E.L.L. Our former music teacher turned Professor Attendance turned principal the year after I graduated, Mr. Kling, was cracking down on the personal day policy. Luckily for me his appetite for power wasn’t appeased until I was long gone.
I had many enablers with the attendance policy, my favorite of which had to be Mrs. Young. Let me preface this by saying that Mrs. Young was truly one of the nicest people you’d ever meet. I’m just not entirely sure as to what her job entailed. Technically, she was the sick room “nurse.” She’d file the paperwork that allowed you to keep medicine on file and then administer said medicine when your symptoms required treatment. But it was the individual student that decided when symptoms were bad enough for medication; and Mrs. Young was no more qualified to make that call than the student, because she wasn’t a licensed nurse.
In addition to filing medication paperwork, Mrs. Young was also the person to whom you’d state your case when your health condition required you to leave school early due to sickness. She’d typically ask tough questions such as “What’s wrong?” or “Would you like me to call your mom to see if you can leave early?” Um, yes please!
The thing I remember most about Mrs. Young, though, wasn’t her fantastic filing skills or interrogation when the school’s lunch had caused a bit of rumble in my tummy. I vividly recall her fondness for Cheez-It crackers and paperback romance novels. It never failed that she’d be sitting at her desk, Harlequin in one hand and real cheese flavor baked into a snack in the other.
All those perks and summers off. Now that’s sick!
Don’t forget about the birthday balloons.
I also want to read a post about Skip.
Left by Jody on May 16th, 2008