Today was the last day of school for the little goddess, and a half-day at that. In a rare tag-team pickup, the wife and I were both there to get her, and we see this miserable little face looking at us from our vantage point in the pickup line. A face that bursts into tears as she comes over to us.

She’s leaving her current elementary school for a new one next year (just a few blocks away, but the district breaks up the K-2 and the 3-5 grades into separate schools), which means she’s leaving the teacher she’s had for two years now.

You’d think her teacher had died or we were moving to some distant nation, given that she cried for at least 45 minutes straight, not even consolable with the reminder that we have her teacher’s email address, we all live in the same town, and she can visit her old teacher from time to time before or after she goes to her new school.

Suffice to say that when the goddess gets sad, she insists on staying sad for a while and she has a remarkable ability to re-trigger herself to keep the cycle going.

The teen years are clearly not gonna be conducive to my peace of mind or sanity.

But for now, thank God for streaming on the iPad and her favorite kid-friendly sitcoms to distract her and turn the tears to hiccups and…finally…a mere memory.