Parent Teacher Conferences Part 2

Okay, here is what really happened at the conference. I was hesitant to blog about it, thinking it was just my interpretation and not Andy's, but last night we about peed our pants laughing at ourselves.

In our defense, we are normal, I think, in the fact that we want to make a good impression to others. Don't all parents want the secret of their ineptness at parenting to stay....a secret? We acknowledge that we are practicing on Tess, but we don't want the whole world to know. That might involved the three little letters I hear a lot at work.
DFS

We probably could blame this on Tess (not recommended by most good parents) If she could have a few more problems in school, maybe we wouldn't have to talk at all. We could just nod our head and mutter "uh-huh" and "okay" possibly even a "yes, we understand the consequences."
But NOOOO. She has to be all good and smart, so the total time the teacher needs to talk to us is about 2 minutes and 47 seconds. The rest of the time is left to us to fill with playful banter and such. Here are some samples of the stupid things that came out of our mouths.

example 1
We were looking at paperwork describing a test that the kids take to determine something about reading and language skills...and Tess scored a crazy high number which the teacher showed us in a findings sections at the bottom of the page. I wanted to know what the "normal" or average score should be to which she showed us clearly depicted on a graph on the same page. I immediately felt stupid because if I had looked at the graph I would have seen the average compared to Tess. My husband, on the other hand, says "You see, my analytical mind went straight to the graph for the information instead of reading the findings below."
YOUR WHAT? I about fell out of my chair to the floor.

example 2
The teacher shows us some scores from Tess's math grades and is telling us that she is "well above average" and gets special math work with the cadet teacher. Instead of just nodding my head and mumbling "okay" I have to go on some rambling speech about our philosophy of grades and math and how to solve world hunger.........good grief.
That was Andy's turn to almost fall out of his chair to the floor.

example 3
Andy starts talking about being a Watch DOG last year(when dads come and help out during the school day in the classroom etc) and how he can't do that anymore because "she took a full time job" and blah blah blah............
That was when I about PUSHED him out of his chair to the floor. Thanks for throwing me under the bus, dude.

It really was only a 15 minutes conference time, but felt like an eternity. Last night Andy brought up how he was sorry he said the thing about the Watch Dog, to which I admitted I felt like such a babbling idiot myself. We both started re-playing the conversations and had a good laugh at how stupid we sounded.

We also decided that next year we are making index cards with appropriate, short answer questions we can ask during an awkward silent spell....because clearly neither one of us can be trusted with small talk.