Kids are back at school, and – duh – they all need brain-dead stuff like a backpack, notebooks and pencils. But my kid is special, see. My kid is a snowflake. He’s got pencils, but he needs pizzazz.
So naturally, I’ve compiled a list of the top five things (there’s more, dudes, but attention span) that my special little snowflake needs for back-to-school time. Your kid probably doesn’t need them because I’ve seen your kid. He’s OK, but he’s all boogery and I can tell from the look in his eye that he’s not a go-getter. You want a go-getter? Dude, you can’t handle a go-getter if you even hesitated answering for a fraction of a second. This list isn’t for you, Mr. Mediocre.
My one-of-a-kind bag of awesome kid isn’t settling for middle road. So here’s just some of the stuff I’ve got on his back-to-school schedule wish list:
Back-to-School Need 1. Kid Uber / Kid Lyft
Because, bro, I’ve got my own awesome adventures to be on. I can’t be bothered to drive him to school and pick him up. That’s an everyday thing, and if you know me, you know I have a religious exemption from doing the same thing twice in a week. My life is exciting, dynamic, Instagrammable and Pinteresting. Now, it’ll be weird for a different person to pick him up every day, but I’ve kicked down a couple extra credits to make sure they have a sign with his name on it. That way, his school will be all “oh, that’s first class right there.” S**t, yeah, it is. Thanks for noticing.
Back-to-School Need 2. A Kindergarten Registry
College dorm registries are a thing. And that’s cool, but it’s getting into registering too late in the game. I’ve been pounding pavement this week trying to get retailers to give me a kindergarten registry hub. There, my son can poke around their fine virtual establishments and add items without me standing next to him in a big-box retailer asking “How about THIS backpack? How about THIS one?” And dude, like I want to discuss with my son whether his favorite color this week is red or black or green. And shoes? Get out of here.
I’d rather let the kid just register for his supplies, and let grandma and grandpa take it up with Target and Amazon directly. Since my son can’t technically read, I’m going to have to ask the teacher to make the school supplies list all pictures. Just use clip art and sight words in Comic Sans if you have to. And email it to him directly, please and thanks.
Back-to-School Need 3. A Completely Digital Ink Education
Look, maybe you want your kids (and spoiler alert, you do) to trudge to yesteryear’s drum writing in notebooks, finger-painting and looking at globes, but not me. Honestly, finger-painting. Your kid comes home with some amateur rendition of a shark (and paint on his shirt) and you’ve got to keep it on the fridge until he comes home with another terrible rendition of something else. Give us all a break. Save it to your Camera Roll and let that be that. No more Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper and 22 Pee-Chee folders rotting away in a backpack. No more pencil lead, crayon wax, paints and markers all over him. My son’s soft, immaculately-porcelain skin should not be defiled with such sloppy “art.”
And notebooks? You’re going to make my child write something on a non-indexable, non-searchable, non-categorizable, non-editable sheet of paper? And then what? Go searching for the information later by flipping through pages? Nope. You know what’s indexable, searchable and forward-thinking? Tablets. I don’t even care if it’s an iPad or a Microsoft Surface or a Samsung Galaxy Tab. Just give my kid an app into which he can dictate notes, another for app for art, and another to see real-time maps of the world with traffic, weather conditions and polar vortex overlays available.
Globes? You’re serious? Don’t waste my time and I won’t waste yours.
Back-to-School Need 4. A Domain
You (and you, and you) clearly want your kids to grow up without an identity. Or worse, you want their identity to be mystupidkid2009, because that’s the last email name that’s going to be available when you finally come around. But not my son. Oh, no. I want him domained-up right now. I want school emails going to it. I want tuition stuff going there. I want him managing his financial and socio-online reputation NOW so that when he’s a teenager, he won’t be worrying about starting from scratch – or worse, from whatever boner legacy I’ve left him. Terrible.
My son needs a domain, needs a blog, and needs onto some social platforms, and he needs it now. Your kids are busy doing the hokey-pokey and turning themselves around, and my son’s surging ahead of the pack polishing off his curriculum vitae complete with an email address hailing from his own domain. God, your kids look like rookies. Honestly, it’s embarrassing.
Back-to-School Need 5. Online Major University-Accredited Kindergarten Courses
It’s the first week of being back-to-school and my son is already over your kids. Like, for real. Their problems are so petty. Joey’s got nut allergies. Kevin can’t use scissors. Melinda has a weak bladder. Ugh. It’s s**t like this that slows down the educational process. So let’s step it up here and offer some major university-accredited kindergarten courses.
If my son’s got to learn how to tell time, you’d better believe I want that applied to his hard sciences general education requirements. And ain’t nobody handwriting anymore, so if he’s got to learn how to do it, he’d better be getting his official transfer-ready propers. And look, instead of dealing with Joey, Kevin and Melinda, my son would rather just check in with the kindergarten teacher’s office hours like once a week and do courses from his home office. Nothing personal. Actually, it is.
Editor’s Note: A version of this first appeared on 8 Bit Dad.
Leave a Reply