My kid's school secretary is useless.

[hunter]

17. What happens after that?

When I was a kid the powers-that-be were afraid to call my mom for fear she'd show up raging at them, or raging at me. Hard to say which was worse for them. They were less able to deal with my mom than I was. It was always much more embarrassing to me when she raged at them.

So I spent a lot of time in quiet detention at school with not a word to my parents. I sorta liked it. Otherwise there wasn't a lot of quiet time in my life.

My favorite day as the parent of a high school student was when my youngest had after-school detention, from which I was required to pick him up and sign off on his demerits, on the very same day he was one of the headliners of an evening academic awards ceremony. Woohoo! I got to shake hands with the principal twice that day, once for having a kid who mouthed off to teachers, once for having a kid who was an academic achiever.

Now is the time your kid learns how to deal with authority. You don't want 'em to be like my mom, who would pick a fight with God or the Pope or Saint Peter at the Gates of Heaven, who will tell a criminal or a cop holding a gun to go fuck themselves on a cholla cactus...

...but you don't want your kids to be pushovers either.