With the ‘extended winter break’ announced late last week, this weekend I was faced with a few decisions of what I was going to do with the seven-year-old human that wanders around my house.
His day home is full as parents scramble to find care so I am left with no choice but to smuggle him into the office and capitalize on the free labour.
Getting him in the car and to the office won’t be too hard — I will bribe him with Tim Bits and a sugar-loaded smoothie from Tim Hortons and we will show up, probably a few minutes late. Because when your travel partner is 7, you are late for everything.
When Alex (one of our production gurus) asks who the new guy is, I’ll try to think of a name quickly, probably fail and end up saying his real name anyways. Luckily Alex is a ride-or-die kind of production guy and I know our secret will be safe with him. I don’t know how to tell Alex that he’s going to be sharing his desk though.
And I also don’t know what the societal view is on giving kids coffee but I will try to only let him have three throughout the day instead of the eight or 10 cups of go-juice that the average reporter consumes before noon.
I figure I will let the kid do the story list for the week. That means there will be less COVID articles and more video game-related articles involving Fortnite and Mario Kart, less Kardashian news, more Lego news. The pictures will probably be from a bit lower of an angle — advanced apologies for any heads and eyebrows missing from photos in next week’s issue.
And oh man, you guys write to me about typos now, well next week is going to be a doozey because I am going to let him do the copy editing and maybe even the headline writing (don’t tell my boss but I hate writing headlines). I might make a competition out of it; see if you can spot them.
Okay, I won’t realistically be smuggling him into work but I’m running out of ideas on how to handle these breaks and such, as I’m sure most of us are by now. And even though they haven’t said it outright and they smile, I’m sure my bosses are kind of getting sick of the “My kid has COVID symptoms and can’t go to school/has to go home” and the “Well the kids are home from school this week,” song and dance. I know it’s not the teacher’s fault.
Here’s to another week home with the kids. I guess we should try to enjoy it because one day they’ll be off to university or something like that.
Sorry, I have to go, the new guy is confused because the office phone has buttons and no screen.