Here’s a pop quiz.

Your child has lost their school sweater on the coldest day of the year, only weeks after recovering from walking pneumonia.

Do you:

A. Send them in a trendy Gap sweater. It’s navy blue, so it’s almost right, except for the huge logo across the front.

B. Let the child go to school without a sweater to teach them a lesson, risking a relapse.

C. Go into the lost property box and steal a sweater with no name on it. There’s about 100 of them and they all look the same.

Whatever you choose you know there’s a note coming home at the end of the day. When I was a kid, school was full of arbitrary rules: anyone caught wearing their skirt an inch above the knee will be sent home. Anyone caught walking on the left side of the corridor will receive a detention. Any student caught using the visitors’ steps will be stoned.

I thought it would all make sense as an adult, but honestly, the school rules still look ridiculous. I still have no idea why we couldn’t use “the visitors’ steps”. Today, school is no different. Last week, my daughter’s homework consisted of making shapes by joining dots. (Speaking of arbitrary exercises). It came back with a note: do over with a ruler. I know neatness is important, but if the ruler is required just say it in the beginning. We spent 15 minutes trying to erase the shapes sufficiently to redo them. In the end, the page had a bunch of perfectly straight lines with eraser burn everywhere. I suppose that will be another note.