My son is tidying the living room. He’s doing it with proper attention and discernment, taking care to place each of his toys, and his sister’s, in their correct place. This has never happened before and he’s doing it all with a smile on his face.
He is to be paid for these exercises, but that’s not the core reason for his delight. It’s because of what this money will go towards, namely an eventual tally of £5.50 that will fund his participation in Break The Rules Day.
We first became aware of this fundraising event for his school when he started talking about it last week. This was, itself, extremely novel, since my son maintains the time-honoured tradition of all primary schoolchildren of refusing to divulge anything about that goes on between 9 and 3.30 unless medically necessary. There was, perhaps, no greater expression of this deep omertà than the day he came in from school to say nothing much had happened, only for us to receive a professionally taken photograph of him via email, which showed him posing for the camera with a giant barn owl perched on his shoulder.
Break The Rules Day was clearly, therefore, something worth getting excited about. When the letter from school arrived, we learned why. It read like a menu, itemising all the rules he and his classmates would be allowed to break, 11 in all, each priced at 50p. My son had ticked every single box bar one – some with such vehemence that he’d very nearly tore through the paper with his pen.
Some of the items listed were adorably minor, like ‘Eat a snack of your choice’ or ‘Bring squash in your water bottle’. (Tick and tick.) Some were your common-or-garden bonuses, like ‘Have extra playtime in the morning’, ‘Eat dessert before your main meal’ and the sweet, if ominously vague, wording of ‘Free Choice Activity’. (Tick, tick and tick.) Others were so specific they cast a strange new light on the contrived constraints of a classroom’s manufactured world, like ‘Choose where you sit’ or ‘Wear a cap in class’. (Tick, tick.)
The only unticked option on the whole form was ‘Call adults by their first name’. When asked, our boy told us his teacher said she wouldn’t really enjoy that. And so – in a display of obedience that was mildly touching but, I would argue, rather antithetical to the spirit of Break The Rules Day – he complied.
Finally, at the bottom, headed in bold within its own special rectangle of artisanal naughtiness, sat the big-ticket event: for £1, he could toss a wet sponge at the school’s head teacher. (The biggest tick you have ever seen in your life.)
All of which makes his sudden willingness to do chores immediately comprehensible. Soon he’s pleading for extra labours, so he can amass more cash and earn his ticks in full. We send him to tidy his bedroom, stack his books, fold his pyjamas, and prepare his school uniform for a wash.
It all feels quite strange, which then feels strange in and of itself. ‘Have we really never asked him to tidy up his room before?’ I ask my wife as we remind him to place his uniform neatly in the laundry bin.
‘What’s the laundry bin?’ comes his cheerful, and definitive, reply.
