Dueling Parents - by Philip

Just as love means never having to say you’re sorry, I foolishly believed that divorce meant never having to deal with my ex again. But since we have children together, it turns out that nothing could be further from the truth. In addition to the weekly dropoffs of the kids, there are plenty of school events where I can enjoy spending time with the person with whom I have legally certified irreconcilable differences. What could be more fun? Now whenever I go to science fairs, PTA meetings and –worst of all– parent-teacher conferences, I inevitably start to hear the dulcet refrains of Deliverance’s “Dueling Banjos” in my head.

“Come on,” you might say, “can’t you set aside your petty differences for just a few minutes in the interest of maintaining a healthy environment for your children?” Why would you even ask such a thing? If we could do that, we wouldn’t be divorced, now would we, Mr. Smart Guy? The next time you want to ask an imaginary question during a fictitious retelling of my recent life events, maybe you should think things through a little more thoroughly, okay?



I bring this up because my ex and I recently had a parent-teacher conference at our daughter’s elementary school. As I mentioned, this is the most challenging event of all because the two of us are sitting right next to each other in those tiny little elementary school chairs trying our best to focus the discussion entirely on our daughter while pretending to look completely nonplussed, as if our knees are always pressing into our chins like that. But no matter how hard we try, the discussion inevitably ends up in a classic passive-aggressive showdown. Here’s how I remember last week’s conference:

Teacher: "Your daughter is doing really well in all of her subjects, so I think–"

Ex: "Oh good, then all of those tutoring sessions I arranged for her are working."

Teacher: "Um… Yes, as I was saying, she seems to have a good mastery of the math that we’ve been working on, as well as social studies and reading comprehension."

Me: "I'm glad to hear that the time I spend reading to her every night is paying off. I guess the experts are right about giving your children personal attention instead of passing them off to some convicted felon working off his community service hours at the Sylvan Learning Center."

Teacher: "Right... Okay, maybe this would be a good time to move on to the project that your daughter did for the Science Fair last week."

Ex: "The one that I stayed up every night helping her with because her father couldn't be bothered to make color copies of the report booklets and to staple gold lamé around the poster board fringes?"

Teacher: "Yes, it did seem like there was perhaps a bit more parental involvement in that project than most other students had. But did you happen to read the content of your daughter's project?"

Ex: "I would have if I didn’t have to spend so much time ferrying our daughter to ballet, softball, and Pilates classes because someone can't get away from work long enough to support his daughter's interests. Besides, the nice gentleman down at Sylvan helped her with the writing part of her project."

Teacher: "Well, the subject of your daughter's research was how divorce turns parents into stark-raving lunatics. You might want to pay particular attention to the section on petitioning the courts for Emancipation."

Me: "Yes, she is so good at choosing advanced topics since some parents believe in challenging their children instead of coddling them all the time. Where do we pick up her first-place trophy?"

Teacher: "I’m sorry, the Science Fair is not actually a competition so there aren't any trophies."

Me: "Not a competition? Then how do you know who won?"

Ex: "See? See what I had to deal with? It's amazing that our daughter has turned out so well with that kind of horrible influence in her life."



Things were breaking down. I needed to regain the upper hand.

Me: "I won the Nobel Prize."

Ex: "Oh, please, you’ve never even been to Helsinki."

Me: "It's Oslo, bitch, and there’s a lot that you don’t know about me."

Teacher: "Perhaps we should focus on your daughter–"

Me and Ex: "Shut up!"

Ex: "So what did you win this Nobel Prize in?"

Me: "It's just like someone who has never won the Nobel Prize in Literature to end a sentence in a preposition."

Ex: "Whatever! You’ve never even written anything!"

Teacher: "I'm just going to go get some work done."

Me: "I had also never had a threesome since someone thought it was demeaning, but a lot has changed since we split up."

Ex: "Oh, so you've had a threesome now too? Who with, the Nobel Prize committee?"

Me: "Jealousy is such an ugly emotion. Maybe your new rich husband can fix that by paying for the plastic surgery you always talked about."

Teacher (on phone): "Could you ask the security guard to come up to room 217 please? Tell him to bring mace."

Ex: "Just because you couldn't support the lifestyle that I wanted–"

Me: "'Lifestyle?!' Embezzling money from your accounting office to spend on lavish spa getaways with your Latin lover is not exactly what I would call a 'lifestyle.'"

Teacher: "Please tell him to hurry."

Ex: "Oh, right, like all those trips to Las Vegas with your 'personal assistant' were strictly business?"

At this point, I suddenly started feeling a burning sensation in my eyes and then a large gentleman requested that we leave the premises immediately. I should have expected my ex to ruin everything like that, but some lessons are hard to learn. Next time, I might just schedule an individual conference with my daughter’s teacher to avoid all of my ex's wackiness. Maybe we can have it at the coffee shop down the street since that’s outside of the 500-yard radius from the school that the Emancipation Order requires.

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