Codes and conduct

The teen slammed the door and groaned.  An outburst that is not unusual.

She dropped an armload of books on the table before heading into the kitchen to forage for snacks. Also, not unusual. 

She sighed again. Louder. More of the same.

But … 

"Today was an unusual awful," she complained, with a hint of theatrical animation. In addition to the usual burden of juggling the delicate peer and performance pressures in education, "The nurse dress-coded me."

Now "a dress code" - used as a verb - is when a teacher or faculty member formally announces to a student (usually publicly and within earshot of other students) that their attire is somehow in violation of a set of rules the school lists in a handbook that are intended to promote decorum and prevent disruption of the learning environment.

And as a parent I have lived in fear of the dress code's random and arbitrary enforcement - not only by teachers but also peers, neither of whom seem to have any qualms about telling a person their person has been determined to be inappropriate.

These rules include (but are not limited to) restrictions that police boys for T-shirt slogans or sloppiness, while policing girls for showing off any part of the female form.  In my daughter's case, the offending area was about that inch and a half of flesh between the top of her high-waisted shorts and the knot where she had tied her oversized t-shirt. 

"I had to walk around all day looking like I wasn't even wearing shorts."

Of course, this isn't her first run-in with public school dress code enforcement. There was the I-shouldn't-be-able-to-see-your-shoulders incident in seventh grade and a vexing visible bra-strap saga in eighth grade.

Now, apparently, girls putting knots in their shirts is problematic.

Luckily she has always gotten away with wearing short shorts and leggings as pants - styles that have become ubiquitous  – as well as the occasional wearing-your-pajamas-to class thing, which at times has been sanctioned by teachers in the guise of "school spirit."

Maybe it's the sheer number of coed students dressed in identical "uniforms" tumbling out of school after the bell rings. In their hole-y jean shorts and cropped sweaters, it's difficult to tell them apart. 

I imagine having a line of them standing outside the nurse's office waiting to have the distance between cuff and kneecap measured with a ruler would take up a significant portion of the educational day for no real purpose other than exercising control that authority figures could more uniformly apply if they required actual uniforms.

Now I am enraged.

The news on any given day doesn't help.

Our dumpster fire of a country where kids murder other kids in schools because guns are as ubiquitous as midriffs but eminently more deadly.

I want to take my ruler and measure those discrepancies, as well as other examples of specific adults around these parts who have, without sanction, behaved inappropriately. But somehow pointing in their direction would be rude ... not to mention mortifying to the teenager.

So I'll say nothing.

"Keep your eyes on your own page," seems like a necessary lesson we should all try to learn.