Finding new ways to celebrate big days

My son, Aidan, doesn’t like me going through his backpack. This is, I’ve been told, a normal teenager thing, and the therapists all agree that I should leave it untouched, despite the fact that he failed both English and math last semester, claiming that the homework/essay/Fermat’s Last Theorem/Schrödinger’s cat were all somewhere in that blue canvas sack. My husband Brian is better at “laissezfaire” parenting.

I’ve looked only once and found a candy bar that I gave him in second grade. But in early March, Miss Mirna, the class mother, wrote, “Be on the lookout for graduation pictures ...” Each night, as I picked him up at St. John’s, I’d ask, “Is there anything in that bag for me?” and each night I got a snarl.

Figured we’d get the pictures eventually. If not in his backpack, then in his classroom desk. But then they canceled school for two weeks. A month. Indefinitely.

I tried the school. Tried calling the photographer, got one of those phone trees where I pounded one for English, three for orders, two for graduation only to get sent to this line where the robot voice announced, “Your wait time for a live representative is 312 minutes.”

For me, I miss getting a haircut, but in the grand scheme of things that ain’t nothing. Aidan’s the one who’s missing out on eighth grade. He was supposed to have been confirmed this week, but church is closed. His birthday is next week, and although he will indeed get a year older, it won’t be at Charles Entertainment Cheese’s and it won’t be at the Alamo Drafthouse. He won’t go the senior trip to Six Flags, my very last chance to chaperone the St. John’s

Eagles.

Aidan won’t get to go to summer school, for failing English, a language he claims to know how to speak.

Aidan won’t hear Sir Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance, March No. 1.” (Much as I hate parenthetical asides, today’s trivia is that the title comes from Shakespeare’s “Othello”: Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war!)

And even if he somehow manages to convert those two F’s into D’s, he still won’t graduate. And he won’t have the pictures to prove it. In his damn backpack.

The one thing not in Aidan’s backpack is Queenie, our new puppy. But not for lack of trying. Last week, I got all poetic over soft fur and her chewing all the furniture. After six other juvenile canines in the bedlam blue bungalow in the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior, you’d think that I’d remember that having a newborn in the house means randomly stepping into dog poop as I walk out the door at 4 in the morning; and not discovering that truth until I’m in a meeting with my boss at 9 a.m. and something smells awfully funny.

Also forgotten was the remembrance of wolf pack dominance, that they all had to growl and snap at each other. Poor Buddyboy! Thirteen years old and he’s forgotten why he barks, but he still thinks he’s the alpha.

On the subject of missed graduations, the FisherPaulsons are the only Pekes to get expelled from Obedience School. “I don’t mean to insult you,” the trainer said, “but your dog’s not bright enough to operate his own tail.”

But thanks to Ms. O, the school secretary, we got to say, “Oh, George, it’s a graduation miracle!” She hunted down Lifetouch and got them to give up the secret code to Aidan’s pictures. The irony? Turns out that when they took those pictures that day, they didn’t have robes with them. So they took his pictures, and if we buy the package, they’ll digitally insert a cap and gown on top.

So there you have it. Make your own graduation. I ordered a cap and gown online, because any day can be graduation day. Any day can be a birthday. You just have to celebrate.

Matter of fact, in this brave theoretical new world, we’re going to put Queenie through Virtual Obedience School. My boots will smell a lot better.

Speaking of things that haven’t happened in the past few months, the readings for my new book, “How We Keep Spinning…!” got canceled for the past eight weeks because of the coronavirus. But Copperfield’s solved the problem. We are doing a virtual reading at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 14. Go to the bookstore’s website (www.bit.ly/ paulsononline) to register. This way you can hear me talk without even having to put your pants on. If I’m late, I’m still trying to figure out how to get online.

I ordered a cap and gown online, because any day can be graduation day.