Discombobulation

My dear son, Caleb, has a horrible condition.  It is called Discombobulation.  We have been ignoring the symptoms for some time, but this morning I couldn't look the other way any more. 

This is a condition for which there is no cure.  Only intense symptoms that manifest themselves in a variety of insidious ways.

Poor kid.  On a wall of cubbies at school where the kids keep their homework and books, Caleb's is the one belching art projects.  In fact, at his conferences, his teacher mentioned that they had talked about the fact that it wasn't okay to use the entire top of the cubby space for all of his extra work.

This is the boy who forgot his homework at school on Monday, brought home a slip on Tuesday to tell us he forget it (that we signed and sent back), who then forgot to turn the slip about forgetting back in on Wednesday.

This is the boy who often has to be reminded to button his pants, even when that means they are falling off.

So this morning, it smacked me in the face.  No, it kicked me in the face.  I was (again) racing to get out of the house.  Ever since the punted bag, we have been having the kids get their backpacks and totes together the night before.  That all has gone pretty well.  Until today.  I quickly straightened up the back hall. And found this.

Caleb's shoe.  Just one of them.  And not another one to be found anywhere.  (Yes, that means this was the second day this week I was on my hands and knees, in tights and a skirt no less, in the closet trying to find shoes.) 

Another manifestation of his condition is that Caleb kind of trashes his shoes.  He simply can't put them on without shoving the tongue all the way to the toe, stepping down the backs, and wearing out the bottoms in about four weeks from shuffling around.  So unlike Noah, who has several pairs of shoes to pick from and generally grows out of them before he trashes them, we have opted to just let Caleb have his two favorite pairs, wear the heck out of them, and then start again.

When I could only find his three shoes, I knew immediately that meant he had taken one shoe to school.  And it's snowing, and wet and messy, and all he had was his boots.

Which made me look like this.

 

I dropped Eli off at daycare and drove off to Caleb's school.  Which meant I got to tromp through some more of this.

 They were already into their school day, so I walked to his classroom.  All of the kids were sitting on the floor listening to the teacher read.  All the kids except Caleb who was sitting on a chair because, after all, he had wet, muddy boots on.

I caught the teacher's eye, held up the shoe and we have each other the knowing look that parents and teachers of kids with Discombobulation do.  Caleb cheered, "My shoe!" and ran out to get it on.  And then I noticed that, as usual, because of his Discombobulation, he had again forgot to roll up his too-long pants, and too-long sleeves.

 

Yes, my child has Discombobulation.  But, he's cute and adorable and endearing and smart, and we love him.