Has a Teacher Ever Accused Your Child of Doing Something Strange?

The teacher accused my daughter (who was five years old at the time), of peeing during class. My daughter vehemently denied the accusation.

The actual truth was even weirder.

Because Miss Baryshnikov (I am making up the name), who was my daughter’s ballet teacher, was besides a proud and rather attractive ballerina, also the very personification of what medieval people would have called “a shrew.” (Not making up the name.)

A ballerina shrew.

And the ballerina shrew had explicitly forbidden the four -and five-year-olds she was introducing into the wondrous world of The Nutcracker and Swan Lake (Tchaikovsky, marry me !) to take a Nr. 1 break during class. But my five-year-old really had to go.

So my daughter ran to the restrooms and peed like one can only pee when one has to pee for a peeing long time. And then, according to Miss Baryshnikov, my daughter “had peed during class.”

And in a way, Baryshnikov was right, but in my fatherly eyes she was bitterly wrong.

No pirouette would ever change that.