So it has started.
By the time this is published dear reader her little left hand will be laying down perfectly constructed sentences in her singular style.
English Paper One.
She was chilled this morning , but her dad wasn’t.
Yesterday I was sent on a shopping expedition for two items; a wrist watch and ‘Rescue Remedy’.
This morning she was wearing one of them and had just ingested the other.
In this republic we cherish the children of the nation by subjecting them to a barbaric summer ritual we colloquially call ‘The Leaving’.
It is the gateway to university for any eighteen-year-old in this state.
For all of the years my crew have been at their Gael Colaiste the great and the good in Dublin have been talking about overhauling the system.
Herself was chilled out enough this morning for her old dad to be able to manoeuvre the car in the direction of the school on time.
Is she had been in bits then I would have gone to pieces.
I know she’ll be fine apropos matters academic.
In the ten subjects in the Junior Cert she got 9 ‘A’s and yes dear reader she was pissed about getting a B1…
She was the best student in the Junior Cert year by a margin of 5 ‘A’s.
Her mother and I were pleased that she was pleased.
However, she disclosed a colleague of hers was petrified to go home to her parents because she did not get the required marks.
I hope those folk have chilled out in the intervening years.
It is, after all, only a fekkin exam!
By this time next week, it will pretty much all be over.
Whatever marks she gets she’ll be fine.
For entirely non-academic reasons I hope she gets the points for Trinity as that will put the two sisters in Dublin at the same time so that they can mind each other.
The Príomhoide reckons herself is a racing certainty for over 550 points and he is a veteran of the Leaving at this stage.
Her battle cry this morning as she stepped out of the car was “…be grand…” and that was a string quartet to my years.
I know she’ll be grand and I hope all the other babas are too.
That we put eighteen-year-old babies through this doesn’t say a great thing about us at all.
