Home-schooling Hell
THE SET-UP
Mum logs into Child 1’s account at 8.58am.
Logging into Google Classrooms is harder than hacking into the Pentagon, but Mum has had plenty of practice over the last nine months ( and thanks to the complicated nature of the procedure, she has managed to add some rather colourful words to her vocabulary that she might otherwise not have thought of).
After making a quick mental note of today’s assignments, she then loads Microsoft Teams and clicks ‘Join meeting.’
But nothing happens.
Mum wiggles the mouse impatiently and clicks a few buttons in a haphazard fashion, totally clueless as to what any of them actually mean.
Still nothing.
She swallows the obscene words that are threatening to escape from her lips, then wiggles and clicks some more.
Teacher’s face suddenly pops up on screen, so Mum nose dives off the chair and continues to click the mouse on the microphone button from underneath the desk. She may be doing it blind, but it’s necessary.
She absolutely must not let teacher and thirty kids see the truth; that she’s wearing her nightie, her tits are swinging under her pits and she’s got more grease on her hair than what you’d find in a McDonalds chip fryer.
Mum prises Xbox controller out of Child 1’s mitts and makes him sit on chair, then crawls out of the room on all fours to ensure that she remains out of sight (thus preserving her dignity).
FREE PERIOD
With Child 1 suitably entertained by a teaching professional, Mum now has to deal with Child 2. She finds him in the lounge gawping at a YouTube video of an American teenager who is force-feeding himself chilli peppers to make people like him. The most wonderful of role models.
‘Time to do some work,’ is all she says.
Child 2 wails like an apparition of the underworld, then scarpers out of the room and locks himself in the downstairs loo.
Mum could spend the next half an hour trying to lure Child 2 out of the toilet, but she figures that her time would be better spent doing some work. Mum has a mortgage to pay after all (not to mention bills —many many bills) and failure to keep up with payments will result in the family having to live in a tent and survive from the contents of a street bin.
But Mum is hungry. How is she supposed to concentrate on her work when her stomach is empty?
Mum goes to make breakfast but the kitchen is trashed and there isn’t a clean plate or knife in sight. No one has bothered load the dishwasher, so as usual, it’s down to her. But she’s too tired for that right now…she needs some caffeine first.
Mum makes a coffee and decides to take a few minutes to wake herself up. She accidentally sits on the remote control and the TV jolts to life.
Before she knows it, she has watched half an episode of Bridgerton and is now fantasising about the Duke tearing the dressing gown off her back and having his wicked way with her on the un-hoovered staircase.
Mother, may I ?
THE MATHS
Child 1 comes down the stairs with laptop and presents Mum with four pages of fractions that he needs help with.
Mum’s brain has been through so much over the last 31 years since she last did fractions. Her teenage years were spent binge drinking White Lightning and Mad Dog 20/20 around the back of the rugby club, then she battled through four years at University where she survived on pints of Carling, tequila slammers and Pot Noodles. Ten years of working, followed by ten years of birthing kids, sleepless nights and school runs means that Mum is not the woman she once was.
If she was shite at fractions back in 1989, then it’s fair to say that she’ll have a cat’s chance in Hell of being any good at them now.
Enter Dad.
He got a C in GCSE Maths a few decades ago, so surely he is more than qualified to handle this one?
Mum flatters Dad. She bigs him up in front of Child 1 and instils him with enough confidence to tackle the challenge alone. Dad agrees, and when the coast is clear, Mum refills her coffee, hits play on the remote and picks up where she left off with the Duke.
Phwoar! Oh, to be that teaspoon!
THE ENGLISH
Child 2 emerges from downstairs loo.
He is “starving to death” even though he had breakfast one hour ago. Mum lures him to the table with the promise of cookies and once his cheeks are bulging with Maryland’s finest, she presents his English work to him.
Write a paragraph about your favourite moments of 2020.
Child 2 is a perfectly intelligent human being. He can read, write and possesses the dexterity and stamina required to operate an X Box controller for six hours a day. With this in mind, Mum cannot fathom why he struggles to write one sentence without developing debilitating hand cramps.
“My hand! It hurts!” he moans. “I think it’s BROKEN!”
Determined for her child to succeed in life, Mum slaps a Mr Men plaster on Child 2’s hand to appease him, then stands over his shoulder squawking “Capital letter”, “Finger Space” and “ Full stop” in regular intervals like a manic parrot.
When Mum glances down 45 minutes later and sees just three illegible sentences on the page, she excuses Child 2 from table . She takes two paracetamol to curb the agony of her impending brain haemorrhage and does the work herself, making sure to do whatever is necessary to make the work appear consistent with her son’s effort.
Dad has disappeared.
His GCSE Maths skills have obviously taken a serious beating and Mum suspects that he is upstairs in the airing cupboard screaming into a bundle of towels.
Child 1 still has English to do, so Mum has to take one for the team and step up.
Research and write a presentation about Anne Frank.
Mum loads a Wikipedia page about Anne Frank and starts to read aloud to Child 1 who is cartwheeling across the floor. Moments later, he announces that he needs an “urgent poo” and vacates the room dramatically.
Mum waits patiently at first, but by the time Child 1 returns from doing a “legendary poo”, she has somehow wandered off the Wikipedia page about Anne Frank and has bought a new bath mat and some replacement toothbrush heads on Amazon. She has also taken a Buzzfeed quiz- ‘Which Harry Potter Character Are You?’ and is delighted by the results… Hermione. Not too shabby!
After being wrestled into a chair and threatened with a lifelong internet ban, Child 1 finally begins to type word for word the information that Mum steals off the internet. She knows that plagiarism is wrong, but it can’t be helped. Child 1 is eleven and despite being in the British education system for over seven years, he is apparently incapable of stringing a basic sentence together without assistance.
He types with the pace of a sloth that’s been hit with a tranquiliser gun. “Where is B?” he says. “Where is R?” “Where is B again?”
Mum is on the edge. She can’t take it anymore. Having her fingernails extracted with a pair of pliers would be less painful.
She excuses Child 1 from the table and puts her head in the freezer to cool down.
ART
After lunch, everyone is feeling refreshed. Bellies are full, caffeine levels are soaring and Mum and Dad are in much better moods. They haven’t done any of their work and will probably get fired, but that’s okay. There’s still time.
First, Child 2 has to tackle his Art homework:
Make a bridge using marshmallows and spaghetti.
Dad decides to take on this one. He risks his life and ventures out to the corner shop in the middle of a global pandemic and returns with five bags of marshmallows. After enticing Child 2 away from YouTube with the promise of a fiver’s worth of V Bucks, they set to work.
Two hours later, Child 2 is engaged in a Fortnite Battle and is screaming at the TV, and poor Dad is red-faced and demoralised after his marshmallow structure refuses to stay erect.
Mum tries to tell Dad that he is going overboard.
She tells him to shove some spaghetti in a few marshmallows and be done with it, but the man will not rest until he has created an exact replica of Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Dad eventually gives up. His nerves can’t handle the pressure.
The bridge is dismantled and the kids eat the rubble whilst Mum logs onto Google Classrooms to check what the last piece of school work is.
P.E
Yeah, so Joe Wickes can kiss Mum’s fat arse!!
She faceplants a cheesecake and washes it down with half a pint of Pinot Grigio.
Give it a rest buddy
ONE YEAR LATER:
Mum and Dad are living full time in a lunatic asylum, which all things considered is a good thing.
After getting fired from their jobs, defaulting on their mortgage and losing their house, it was either the asylum, or living on the streets in a teepee made from marshmallows and spaghetti.
THE END