Benny Jay: Parent-Teacher Conference

I'd been on the phone for a half hour non-stop -- lost track of time -- when I looked up and noticed it was three. Had to hurry -- didn't want to be late for the parent-teacher conference.

Funny thing about parent-teacher conferences -- when my kids were young, they were mighty big deals. My Wife and I listened to every word the teachers said, as if they were special views into the souls of our children.

You learn as time passes -- they're just snap shots. Nothing more, nothing less. Glimpses of where a kid is at particular moments in life.

Still I gotta go. My wife's working so it's up to me. I zip up to the school and promise myself I'll be in and out -- just grab my Younger Daughter's report card, let `em see my face, and skedaddle.

But, you know how it goes. I walk in to the school and first thing I see is my daughter's friend Allory. She tells me she got an academic four-year full ride to Wash U in St. Louis.

"You mean full ride as in -- for free?" I ask.

"Yes...."

"Dang, girl -- when did you get so smart?"

She smiles and shrugs, as if to say: What can I tell you, Mr. Jay....

I turn the corner and bump into Jackie. Give her a big hug. Haven't seen her in ages. Her daughter, LaQuita, and my daughter played on the same basketball team. LaQuita had a deceptively quick first step. Freeze the defender with a short head fake and be half way to the basket before the defender knew what's up. Her father, Leonard, and I used to sit together at the games. Damn, he was good company. Cheered the team, teased the referees and laughed at my jokes. I loved watching basketball games with Leonard and Jackie.

"`Quita's captain of the team," Jackie tells me.

"You're kidding me," I say. "That's sensational. You tell `Quita congratulations...."

By now its over a half an hour and I still haven't met with one teacher. Got to pick up the pace. But Ms. Garcia, the physics teacher, has a little time on her hands and she's a good story teller. Starts telling me about the time she was teaching at Gage Park, this tough-as-hell high school on the city's Southwest Side, and some kid hit her in the face. Didn't mean to. Took a swing at someone else and caught her by accident. "It didn't hurt as much as it surprised me," she says. "I couldn't believe it."

I head over to see Mr. Loucks, the English teacher. It's hard to call him Mr. Loucks. I've known him since he was a 15-year-old high-school sophomore who refereed the itty-bitty basketball league my daughters played in at Welles Park. I take a seat at his desk and we start talking baseball. The man loves baseball. He plays it, coaches it, watches it -- even sells beer at Wrigley Field. We could talk baseball all day, except there's a line of parents waiting at the door.

Off I go to Ms. Reist-Jones, who teaches African-American History. The woman's a trip. Reminds me of me. Starts talking about A and winds up talking about B. Not really sure how she gets there, just sort of stringing stuff together.

She's telling me they're studying African rhythm and she mentions Bernard Purdie. I cut her off: "You mean, the Bernard Purdie?"

"Is there another one?"

"As in the Purdie-shuffle drum beat?"

"You've heard of him?"

"Have I heard of him?" I go into this whole thing about how I read this article in the New York Times about how Purdie played with everyone -- from James Brown to Frank Sinatra. How he used the Purdie shuffle on "Home At Last" by Steely Dan. One of my favorite songs. I start singing it: "Well, the danger on the rocks is surely past...."

She shows me a video of Purdie on the New York Times website. I tell her there's a better video on youtube. But we can't get to YouTube cause the Board of Education's got it blocked from the school computers. I tell her we should be able to figure out someway to get beyond the block. We bend over the computer. Then I notice parents waiting at the door. Maybe another time.

By the time I get out, it's been more than an hour. I go to my car and turn on the radio. I'll be damn -- they're playing "Deacon Blues." My favorite Steely Dan song of all time. From Aja, the same album with "Home at Last." Probably got Bernard Purdie playing drums. I turn it loud and sing along: "I cried when I wrote this song, sue me if I play too long...."

For some reason, it makes me think about a parent-teacher conference for my Older Daughter back in 2004, when she was a sophomore in high school. She was screwing up big time back then, making life miserable for her chemistry teacher. He let me have it when I came to talk to him. Told me she talks too much, is rude and a distraction. I just about dropped to my knees seeking forgiveness. I said she was going through a particularly difficult stretch of adolescence and I predicted that one day she would grow out of it. It was just a shame that he -- of all people -- had to bear the brunt of it. I profusely apologized for that.

I don't think I got through to him. He didn't smile. I understood. She was making his life miserable -- why should he care about what might happen down the road?

The thing is my older daughter did turn it around the very next year. She got her act together and never looked back. Found her way to politics of all things. Went to work for the Democrats and got hundreds and hundreds of white Iowans to vote for Barack Obama. Helped elect the country's first black president. How `bout that?

But that's the thing about parent-teacher conferences. They're just snapshots. They don't tell you what kids got in them.

I turn down the radio and put the car into drive. Man, I wish that chemistry teacher could see my older daughter now....