My children only recently started school, so I was blithely unaware that certain things (number-line math aside) have changed significantly since I was a student. Bringing your teacher an apple—even a lovely organic one—is out. Lavishing her with five days’ worth of gifts and gratitude is in, and it’s tagged Teacher Appreciation Week.

Before you all get mad at mean old me, let me just say that I appreciate the heck out of teachers. I was raised by two of them, so I know firsthand how dedicated, overworked and underpaid they are. Schoolteachers completely deserve to be showered with cards and flowers and seasonal salads. They do. But even the most well-intentioned school event can shred a working parent’s schedule into smithereens if it gets out of hand. Let me tell you how.

I have two kids attending two different schools. So to appreciate their teachers, each day for an entire week we had to tote in a series of designated tokens of affection: a hand-drawn picture one day, a potluck dish the next—you get the idea. For two schools.

In accordance with the multi-page Teacher Appreciation Week Instruction Guide the PTAs sent home, on Monday we were to bring in a flower for each teacher. “A single stem or a bloom from your yard is fine,” read the tome. I have even less time to garden than I do to keep up with school paperwork. Suffice to say there are not a lot of blooms in our yard. I briefly considered swiping a couple from a neighbor but decided that stealing was not a good lesson to model for my kids.

No biggie, I’d just pick up a couple of flowers at the supermarket before school. Only it turns out no one is staffing the floral department at 8 a.m. on a Monday. I suppose I could have made do with a bunch of anemic-looking carnations that had been sitting out all night. But come on, that’s not appreciation! I might as well have grabbed a handful of dandelions from the highway median strip.

With 10 minutes to go before drop-off, I began to panic. I reached behind the counter and helped myself to a drippy bouquet of tulips that had not yet been packaged for sale. As the checkout clerk struggled to ring up blooms sans price sticker, my kids ran around knocking over produce displays and crashing into shoppers’ carts. Just then, another mom I know walked by, bleary-eyed, and said, “Oh, man. I totally forgot about the flowers.”

So, fellow frazzled working moms everywhere, I have a suggestion: Next time Teacher Appreciation Week rolls around, how about we all agree to just pick up our kids early for a week? I’m sure the teachers would really appreciate that. Wait a minute...how do I make that happen?

Gardening, anyone?

Illustration by Shirley Chang