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Pta Essay

In: Other Topics

Submitted By steven12345678
Words 511
Pages 3
I arrive at my very first PTA meeting ten minutes late, and every punctual in the room turns to watch me enter. It’s a passive-aggressive ploy to guarantee I’ll trigger all the traumas from my own school days—fear of embarrassing myself in public, of failing, of not fitting in.
I spot the friend who’d talked me into going, wedge myself into the tiny cafeteria bench beside her, and look around. The room is populated with committee queens and fundraising phenoms. I don’t see a soul I know.
And then, crap, I do.
I was afraid Caroline would be here. We’d been friends in college, in fact, before she cheated on her boyfriend with my boyfriend, she’d even stayed at my parents’ house once for spring break. Like me, she’d settled near the college town, and that’s why fate had stuck us together again, me, as the newbie PTA mom, and Caroline, as the third grade teacher everyone loves. I shift a little so my friend’s shoulder hides me.
The meeting basically consists of committee leaders giving pleas for volunteers: car parkers at the fundraiser, helpers at the book fair, people to sell Yankee candles and pies. Ugh, no thanks. I ignore the sign-up sheets.
I try glancing around the room in what I think is a stealthy way, and
Caroline catches my eye. At least I think she does. She’s always had that wandering eye—no, really, it’s an actual condition that keeps them from pointing in the same direction. I wonder what my ex-boyfriend thought of that, and what the little kids think now. Do they ask her about it? Does she mind? I look away.
The arts committee chair stands up. I recognize her name. She’d written a memoir set in our town that had gotten good reviews. I’d been writing a locally set memoir too, and when hers came out, gave up.
She looks nothing like her author photo; motherly, not glamorous, her clothes eccentric. Her chest has a lopsided look, and I remember the reference in her book to cancer.
“I go into the classroom,” she says, “and help fourth graders write memoirs. They write two or three pages, but one girl did ninety. That’s ten pages for each year of her life!”
The room cracks up, and she joins them.
“I pay for it out of pocket,” she says, “and I’m here tonight because I’d really like to get permission to do them with the third grade too.” She sits down. I can feel the room still smiling.
My friend rolls her eyes. “They’ll never get done before nine this way,” she says. The wall clock reads eight-thirty—a half-hour later than I’d told myself I’d stay. I reach for the arts committee sheet in front of me and scrawl my name, shift my legs so my buttocks can un-paralyze, and look around to see what’s going to happen next.
Caroline is facing my way again. She waves. My right hand rises, and I wave back.
(501 words)

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