The "Dog" Ate My Homework

The other night, I threw my son's homework away.

Can you imagine him going to school with that excuse? "I'm sorry, Mrs. H., my mom threw my homework away."

Yeah. Right.

But it's true. I did.

We were going through the seven folders in his accordion file for each of his seven classes and separating the papers that I needed to sign, or the ones that needed to be returned to school, from the ones that had already been graded and returned. Paper tends to accumulate quickly in his accordion file.

In my quest to keep him organized, I fell quite short myself. I picked up the wrong stack of papers from the table and tossed them into the kitchen trash can, a fact we did not discover until after the remains of the tomato-based soup we had for dinner were scraped out of bowls on top of the aforementioned homework.

In years past, this would have caused a meltdown of epic proportions. But in his newfound middle school maturity, he simply got a dish towel, wiped chunks of tomato and cannelloni beans off of the college-ruled notebook paper, and recopied his work onto pristine paper.

We've worked so hard this year to get him organized. Each folder in the accordion file is color coded to correspond to a class. He carries his agenda with homework assignments written out for each class period. His school supplies are in a box in his backpack and workbooks and school papers are filed into the accordion folder with their folders under individual subjects. At home, there's a designated space to do homework. There's a place to keep backpacks, school uniforms, school shoes and lunch supplies. Today he gets assigned his locker at school so he doesn't have to carry as much around with him.

Now perhaps I need a better filing system. Trashcan notwithstanding.