In preparation for taking care of the parental share of high school “home work” I bought sixteen (yes- sixteen) rolls of wrapping paper. Four rolls each of four different “colours” that I thought Damien would like (‘coz he wasn’t with me at the time). I wanted to make sure he had enough to cover his books the same if he wanted to- like all the math books yellow and all the Afrikaans books blue or whatever. I also bought two sets of book labels (16 in a set), a roll of sellotape, and two packs of my new favourite “find” with which to make my life easier: easy-fit-adjustable-pre-cut-slip-on-plastic-book-covers (10 in a set) because covering the books with plastic is my least favourite part. I have since covered exactly six books. Why? Because he has only received six books so far- this is so not what I am accustomed to. Every year so far I have received just about all his books and had to cover them all, roughly within the first week of school having started. He also has had very little homework. And since this is high school- he and he alone is responsible for writing down his homework- and if there’s nothing written down, I don’t know about it. He of course insists he doesn’t really get any and his work is up to date. But as much as I want to trust him and believe he is fine and coping, all this is doing is bringing back bad memories of school years past where he also insisted everything was hunky-friggin-dory while the teachers were all but begging him to do his work. I just hope that these teachers let me know about a problem a lot sooner than any of the others did.