“Why do you assume it’s my fault?”

When my son surprises me by coming home carrying a school trophy, it causes some powerful emotions within me. Pride. Joy. Confusion. Sadness. Terror.

It’s the school cup for “Getting on with it.”. It is truly lovely that such a cup exists. I am indescribably proud. He is beaming. His happiness is my happiness. His Joy is my Joy.

Then confusion comes. I am usually informed a day or two before any prize is supposed to be awarded, so I can go to the assembly and clap and take pictures and happy-cry a bit.

This makes me sad. I am usually there to see the many, many awards being awarded to many beaming pupils. It’s lovely. He may have been looking out for me in the crowd, and I wasn’t there. He doesn’t seem in the least bit bothered, but I am.

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Then I freeze. The terror comes. I realise that I most certainly would have been notified. This is one of my roles in our family. To monitor the various communications from the school, the many, many communications from the school, and make sure we don’t miss important things like award presentation assemblies amongst the notifications about nits and lost cardigans.

Monitoring, administrating, attention to detail, none of these things are among my strong points. My wife is painfully aware of this fact.

I feverishly look back through my texts and emails. Nothing. I am both enraged and overjoyed. Why didn’t they notify me!? This is unacceptably unacceptable! It’s all their fault!

My wife is not happy either. I am incandescent with self righteousness. My moral outrage is worthy of the kind of Hollywood movie about injustice that gets Oscars. “Here’s the invitation,” my wife says, briefly scanning our emails.

“Oh.”