Jets vs Sharks

Yesterday was the last day of the month and if you would have driven through my neighborhood between the hours of 12:00 and 2:00 you would have witnessed a very strange phenomenon.  There you would see men in shirts and ties, scurrying from door to door like a well orchestrated ant colony.  In my neighborhood the last day of the month means that it’s time to do Home Teaching.  For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, our church divides the men in pairs of two and assigns them 2 or 3 families to visit.  Each month the companionship is supposed to visit the family to get to know them, check on their well being and bring a short, spiritual lesson to share with them.

The worst part about the situation is that we have to report whether or not we have visited each family every month.  At least once a month a lesson regarding the importance of home teaching is given and we are all reminded that only 15% of home teaching was done the previous month.  Each month it’s the same thing, “brethren we can do better,” while all heads are down, staring at the floor, hoping no one will make eye contact with them, especially the fathers of the families they are supposed to visit.  After 45 minutes of pure and unadulterated guilt, we all shamefully file out of the chapel, promising ourselves we’ll win the star of gold for being the world’s greatest home teacher next month.  However noble our intentions may be, the last day of the month always sneaks up on us.  This makes for an incredibly awkward visit on the last day of every month, with the home teachers and the families pretending that it’s not the last day of the month because that might indicate the home teachers are there out of duty instead of genuine concern. 

So yesterday I was visiting a family with two very young children when the father asked where our kids go to school.  Approximately half of the kids in our neighborhood attend a charter school while the other half go to public school.  My kids go to the public school but my companion told the family that he sends his kids to the charter school because he has noticed that the kids who go to public school “have no respect.”  He then tried to clarify by making a comparison of one of the worst behaved boys in the neighborhood to one of the most angelic girls you would ever meet.  Obviously she is an angel because she goes to a charter school and he is terrible because he goes to public school.  Because my filter is broken I turned to him and asked, “Are you comparing my children to HIM?”  The father, trying to diffuse the situation, then said he is leaning toward sending his kids to public school for the athletics and my companion mentioned that the charter school stresses the liberal arts more than sports.  I replied that it’s fine if he wants his kids to walk around the house singing, “when you’re a jet you’re a jet all the way” (yes, I did do the snapping choreography) but he better send them to my house where I’ll play sports with them and toughen them up a bit for the real world.  Now that I think about it, maybe I should’ve gone to a charter school so that I could treat people with a little more respect. 

For the record, I love West Side Story.