Divorce Balance

Negotiation > Recovery > Enhancement

Friday, February 11, 2005
Talking about Zeros or Hundreds?

Yesterday was the one-hundredth class session at my son's elementary school this year.

Let me just make sure: Things got started on August 31, which was a Tuesday. After that, five days in a week. Subtract holidays, and then review the WJR website to see if they archive closing dates due to snow—.

"Dell, stop! Your post-divorce trust issues are showing."

Accepting the view held by a lot people that yesterday was the one-hundredth day of school, I went in with Number One Son to spend time with him in his class. Same as last year.

And there's a tradition of sorts there, where the principal dons a cape embroidered with numerous zeros. Various shapes, sizes, and colors. She introduces herself not as the principal, but as another person, named "Zero-Zero." Yes, she looks like the principal, but insists that she is not.

This stirs quite a chatter of rebuttals from our early-elementary-school-aged cherubs, as you might imagine.

At this point, let me emphasize that I "got it," of course.

So I relaxed and went along with the premise.

But that all changed when Zero-Zero shocked me to my core with an unimaginably insensitive remark used to sum up a monologue that I was sure she'd delivered — well, hundreds of times. Here it is. "Now that you've made the one-hundredth day of school here," Zero-Zero said to the students, "you are all 'double-0s,' too."

What an outrage! Only one way to interpret that endorsement: A putdown to every female. Undermining every parent committed to raising a more sensitive, caring boy for the twenty-first century.

I winced as my son's principle charged this class with following the example of James Bond, a "misogynist dinosaur" (so labeled by Dame Judy Dench in Goldeneye).

The only "double-0" I can think of — Agent 007.

No other possible interpretation for this remark. Trust me: I pulled the wedding theme from On Her Majesty's Secret Service played for my nuptial event.

Except—.

Well, one of the moms there that I really respect proffered the notion that Zero-Zero might have intended her double-0s to come after the significant digit, rather than before it. This mother went on, ever so gently, to suggest that, while some people might put two "superfluous" zeros in front of a seven for "spy speak," pretty much everyone would need to put two zeros after a one to make a hundred.

So I had jumped to a conclusion based solely on my own limited life view; I misjudged Zero-Zero. I'm sorry. I apologize.

Still, it's frightening to concede this inch, even when confronted with the obvious. Just like in divorce mediations.

Where will it end?

If I admit that I'm wrong here, do I invite a flood "Dell is wrong" demands? Now that I've conceded the hundred-day thing, for example, some people now want me to believe that there is another film icon named "Jaws" that has nothing to do with The Spy Who Loved Me.

"Discipline, Double-0 Seven. Discipline."

—posted by Dell Deaton @6:00 PM EST 2/11/2005 [499]

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