“Okay, everyone. It’s time to get started.� Syllables pacifically spaced. Smile beatific and yet somehow commanding. She sits on her folding chair in front of the loose semi-circle, one plumpish leg folded under her.

“I’ve spoken with most of you in August conferences, but for anyone I haven’t met with yet, I’m Teacher Lisa. I’ll be teaching your children in the morning class this year.� The smile. All those soothing syllables.

“There’s something I like to do. Before I talk about how we’ll be working together with the kids this year, I like to go around the room, each of us sharing something about ourselves. Something we’d like the other parents to know. I’ll start.� Here a pause, a slow glance at the speckled rectangles of the ceiling and then around the church basement, as if for inspiration. Which somehow convinces because Teacher Lisa makes you think she really hadn’t any idea what was going to come into her mind before this moment. “Oh! Here’s something very important about me. I am a dancer. I wish I had more time to dance. Yes. I love to dance.� And you can see it then in the elongation of her neck, in something of the leg tucked under her. Beneath the plumpness, beneath the soft curves, you can see that Teacher Lisa is in fact a dancer.

Now, what Teacher Lisa wants to say is that she is a very sensual person. Perhaps this thought arose and was dismissed as she glanced around the room for inspiration. Perhaps it seemed a bit early to announce to the parents of the nursery school class she would begin teaching the next morning that she is a very sensual person. Besides, she’ll have a chance to get this across at one of the first parent night meetings. She will have them play a getting-to-know-you-even-better game. You reveal a number of favorite things, a handful of fears, what you like to do best alone and then with another person. This last always elicits a few adult giggles and some of them are tempted, but only Teacher Lisa will write “make love.� It’s easy to structure the game so that she can pseudo-shyly reveal this to more giggles, to knowing chuckles. And from that night class on, the beatific smile will seem not only commanding but sensual as well. They will see that, oh yeah, not only is she a dancer, but, right! Teacher Lisa is a very sensual person.

“Oh. Okay, yeah, yes. I guess I can go first. I’m Joan. Nathan’s mom. I guess what I like is going to restaurants and movies. Not that we have much time for that anymore!� Here, a companionable glance around the semi-circle. “Yeah, so I guess that’s it. Dinner out and movies.�

What Joan can’t know is that she won’t last long in this group. What Joan knows, but fails to reveal here at orientation, is that young Nathan has some aggression issues. Instead of mentioning her love of restaurants and movies, Joan might have done well to get out on the proverbial table just how substantial Nathan’s aggression issues actually are. She should maybe have owned up to envisioning this pre-school class—these people’s children—as a group in which Nathan would be able to work through his sizeable aggression issues.

Joan can’t know that eighteen minutes into his first day of pre-school her son will take a serious chomp on innocent Emma’s upper arm. Young Nathan will draw blood. Rumor will come to have it that despite Joan’s being apologetic as hell to both Emma and Emma’s mother—who will not be present as it will not be her work-day but who will pick Emma up at noon—despite having the best intentions to make amends on her son’s behalf, Joan will neglect to really scrub at the mirrored crescents with soap and water. In her misguided efforts to inflict no further pain, Joan will be tentative in her washing, will entirely forgo scrubbing and potentially stinging soap in favor of a thick slathering of anti-bacterial ointment, whose antibiotic properties will be all wrong for this puncture-type wound, whose petroleum base will instead trap her son’s bacteria-laden saliva in the baby fat of Emma’s upper arm, where it will lead to serious infection.

Joan will be introduced forthwith to the “Aggressive Behavior Policy� in the supplemental section of the Palo Alto Parents Nursery School Policy and Procedure Manual. Joan will be mortified, which will manifest itself as chilly detachment bordering on offense, but neither Joan nor her husband will argue when due course leads them through observation—during which Nathan will again bite an unsuspecting classmate, two, in fact—followed by assessment and eventual withdrawal before Halloween per the recommendation of the Director, who will, frankly, be relieved and who would not have been particularly impressed, even had she been present orientation night, by Joan’s fondness of eating out and seeing movies.

“Hi. I’m Eric. Toby’s dad. I like to hike and camp and just be outside as much as I can. I really like to take Toby out with me, hiking and camping and stuff. You know, just the two of us, just the guys. Sort of get Toby out in nature and make sure he really loves the outdoors and hiking.�

But even Eric knows this last is bullshit. Eric almost never takes Toby with him into the great outdoors because, and you see clear through this, no three-year-old likes hiking. Camping maybe, but not hiking, not really. Eric himself has little sense of why he said he really likes to hike with Toby, though this will become a pattern. Erik known, on no cognizant level, that this claim is simply an appeal to this room of somehow still incredibly nubile women. Eric loves his wife, Toby’s mother. Eric is satisfied with their relationship, their sex life, with things on the home-front. But the prospect of being the only male “participating parent� in this group of ladies will lead Eric, during the course of the year, to several more specious appeals.

“I’m Alice. I’m Caitlin’s mom. I guess I like the movies too. And dinners out. But mostly the movies. If I had to choose I would definitely go to a movie over a dinner out. We see a lot of movies.�

But what Alice wants to tell this group of strangers, what Alice is dying to tell anyone at all, is how she and her husband—neither quite sure how it happened, neither sure who had requested the catalog that came in its own anonymous white envelope with a red stamped message reading, “Enclosed is the catalog you requested,� neither able to recall which of them opened the white envelope and which, well, in all likelihood her husband, anyway, the order was placed and a week later in the mail—a vibrator! They were using a vibrator! And let her tell you…this has the potential to change lives! It was all Alice could do to keep herself from announcing to this group of worn-out, sex-deprived parents—mothers actually, except Eric—people she had never met before in her life! how a vibrator had the potential to change everything. All that satisfaction with so little effort! “You’ll be shocked at what a turn-on it is for your husband,� Alice would say, voice rising, quickening, “I know! So surprising! I would have thought Rick would feel unwanted or unneeded or something, but it’s not like that—it’s a huge turn on!� Alice would grow adamant, evangelical, a virtual vibrator spokesperson. But no. Movies. Alice mentions how much she likes movies.

“Okay. Hi. I’m Claire. My daughter is Bronte, after the Andie McDowell character in Green Card? So, I, um. I really like coffee. I almost die if I don’t get about four cups of coffee by like eight in the morning. I drink coffee all day long. So, yeah, I really like coffee.�

True. But what underlies Claire’s love of coffee is not readily apparent. The fact is that Claire depends upon coffee, both its ritual and its caffeine, to ward off the irritation, the despair, the absolutely stultifying phenomenon that is her experience of motherhood. Claire never, not once since she had Bronte, has gone to bed without the automatic coffeemaker locked and loaded. Because Bronte wakes at an unbearable 5:30 am. Every day. Claire has gotten to where the sound of her daughter’s waking, the initial sound of Bronte’s voice—usually addressing some inanimate plaything, but soon bedside, Claire’s husband having already abandoned her for the thick of his commute—Bronte’s voice provokes nothing short of dread. Claire hears her daughter waking and her stomach drops or her hair raises or there occurs some such physiological reaction, a sensation Claire has never really attempted to verbalize except with the low decibel “fuck� that is the first word she utters most mornings.

She tells them that she loves coffee but doesn’t let on how the initial rush of caffeine makes the dread of the long days only just bearable. She does not describe how the escalating caffeine eventually morphs her boredom into rather acute anxiety. She does not tell them because she herself only partially acknowledges that the whole parenting thing is both much more and much less than she bargained for and that she very well may be pretty seriously depressed. Claire smiles, assuming this whole cooperative pre-school experience will be basically miserable. She doesn’t admit that she signed up not because she wanted to be closely involved with her daughter’s first school experience, but because they couldn’t afford anything else. What Claire reveals is a love of coffee and the fact that she’s probably not a big reader of the Brontes.

This last point is filed away carefully by Laura. “I’m Laura. I’m Emma’s mom. I’m a voracious reader. The thing I find most difficult about having kids is that it’s impossible to read as much as I did before.� As she says this, Laura wonders if anyone else picked up on the exploitation of the Bronte sisters first by Hollywood and then by this witless mother. Laura prides herself in both having read the Bronte sisters in depth and having seen Green Card. High culture and low. The significance of the movie’s heroine’s name was not lost on her. Laura prides herself in her degrees: various, advanced, in literature. Laura will grapple almost daily in this group with the question of whether or not she is a complete snob. As this particular evening wears on she will grow more and more pissed off when several other mothers claim that they too love to read, that wow! they should start a book club! to which Laura simply smiles because page-turners and bestsellers are not the type of reading she means. Laura sits and listens and passes judgment and feels somewhat badly about it.

“Hi, everybody. I’m Charlotte. I have a little boy named Max. I have to say that I am just so excited about this year, you know, to get to know all of you and your kids and everything. But, okay, what about me, what about me… I love the movies and dinner out. I’m not a big reader, but I guess I do really like to cook. I love to cook.�

What Charlotte doesn’t know is how this pre-school experience will change the very course of her existence. In the early spring Officer Bradley will arrive for a pre-school demonstration of his cruiser—not the regular, staid variety, but a black and white camaro with red and orange flames and jagged script proclaiming Officer Bradley an emissary of DARE: Drug Awareness Reality Education. Only after one of the other mothers leans toward Charlotte and whispers behind a discreet hand that she has, “a little crush on Officer Bradley,� will Charlotte place his face. Officer Bradley lives just off her cul-de-sac! Many a morning has Charlotte seen Officer Bradley out walking his fat black lab. She has occasionally returned a little neighborly wave to Officer Bradley. And here he is—at Max’s pre-school! Charlotte discovers that there is indeed something about a man in uniform, something in the endearing way this neighbor of hers—not tall, but dark and decidedly handsome—fields three-year-olds’ questions about bad guys and sirens and whether or not policemen get to slide down poles.

As Officer Bradley considers each query, smiling patiently, Charlotte becomes more and more curious if Bradley is his first or last name. She needs to know. After each pre-schooler has had a chance to sit in the black bucket seat, it seems more than natural to introduce herself and to get to the bottom of this name question. She is his neighbor after all, and this Officer Bradley is, well, he’s hot.

Four years and a couple of wrecked marriages later, Charlotte will invite one of the moms from the old pre-school to the wedding and this other mom will have a few too many glasses of merlot and this other mom will titillate more than one guest with the story of Officer Bradley’s fateful pre-school visit.

Eventually the introductions wind around to the very friend who will attend Charlotte and Mark’s wedding—Bradley being Officer Mark Bradley’s surname. “Hi,� she says. “My name is Maya. My son is Jack. This isn’t all that original, but I love to read. If you guys are serious about starting a book club, I would definitely join.�

As it turns out, Maya will have ample time to read in the weeks following this orientation. Maya will be left a bit behind as to parental duties and will need Teacher Lisa’s help getting up to speed on basic pre-school classroom participation, will even miss the first meeting of the book club she is so excited about. As it turns out, the cramping that is making Maya shift about a bit on her folding chair will worsen that night. She will wake her husband Todd a few minutes before four. An hour later he will place a call to her OB’s office, reporting to the patched-through and groggy on-call doctor that Maya is running a fever of 102.8. Maya herself will report her pain as an eight on a scale of one-to-ten, ten being utterly unbearable, leading the doctor to suggest that they head to the emergency room right away.

As it turns out, the IUD that Maya’s doctor had inserted three days before had perforated her uterus. Which will be confounding as perforation is incredibly unlikely to begin with and almost invariably occurs during or immediately following insertion. Perforation days later, or perforation going undetected, is so virtually unheard of that Maya will be subjected to various tests, which will lead to incorrect conclusions, before a naïve young intern will stumble upon just what the hell is going on. Maya will suffer. Maya’s husband Todd and three-year-old Jack and Jack’s baby sister Kate will suffer. The neighbor who will watch the little ones for Maya and Todd will say it isn’t any trouble, but she too will suffer. Ultimately, it will be a good thing that Maya and Todd only wanted two kids because the whole ordeal will end with a complete hysterectomy. But Maya sure is lucky she likes to read because she will have lots of time for that during her hospital stay and subsequent recuperation at home. On orientation night, though, with just the cramping, Maya doesn’t know the half of it.

“So. Okay.� Again, the serene syllables, doing little for Claire’s dread, doing little for Maya’s incipient cramping, causing Laura to wonder if she is even a snob about this peace-loving, dancing, soon-to-be-revealed-as-sensual pre-school teacher. “It looks like we have a lot of readers in this group. And a lot of movie-lovers. And we’ll all want to think about Tanya’s yoga class at the Y. It sounds wonderful! Before I move to the details of working together, I want to thank everyone for sharing with me and with each other. Tonight has been a good start, but remember, this is really just the beginning. I’ve got a good feeling. We’re all going to get to know each other well this year.�