On Catches of the 22 Variety

I head up the Awana at our church. I know I've mentioned this a time or seven before. Generally, I don't mind it. But sometimes it leaves me wanting to bang my head against something super hard until I'm unconscious.

At the start of the school year, we figured a plan that was basically "drive through" to help the kiddos have some sort of normal. It isn't perfect, by any stretch, but it worked well enough. Certainly better than the virtual option that we tried to manage last spring when everyone initially started freaking out about impending doom.

Well, in January--and a little before--there was a marked drop off of the older kids (middle and high school). I get it -- it sucks not to be able to see your friends and interact.

So the children's minister and I put our heads together and came up with options to get those grades back to even closer to normal. There are still some social distancing guidelines in place and so forth, so it's not perfect, but it's improvement.

Yesterday was our first day back to the new regime with those grades. And I thought it went well - my  middle schooler was certainly elated to have time with his friends beyond waving in the hallway. The high school leader said all was well with them.

And then I got an email from the helper in the middle school age class.

Now, to be fair, she's a public school teacher, so she seems definitely to have drunk more deeply from the well of Koolaid. But oh my word. It was a list of infractions that would have made Delores Umbridge proud.

So I chatted briefly with the children's minister, whose MO tends to be "APPEASE AT ALL COSTS!" and I'm ...not really that way. But I was like well, we can make sure they play games outside and sit at tables. That seemed like a reasonable accommodation, given that Delores was asking for way more and also given that socially distanced chairs got moved into pods and if you don't have tables, that's going to keep happening.

So I emailed the leader and he...is displeased.

He basically said no, he wouldn't be doing any of that and why didn't she address it to his face. And that last one, well that's a valid statement because OMG we're grownups. Or we're supposed to be.

So now I'm mulling what the right answer is. Delores said if it doesn't change then she and her son won't be attending and...I mean okay? That's her right to choose that. And maybe that's the right decision--though I do think he needs to at least agree to keep the chairs distanced. Does it probably  matter from a science standpoint? No. The air is circulating so really if you're sitting next to someone vs six feet away, meh. But also it doesn't hurt anyone to do and make it seem as though you take their concerns seriously.

Blergh. There are days I really dislike having to interact with people. Most of those are days that end in y.