It’s that time of year. The days are getting shorter. The leaves are turning. Crispness is in the air.

It’s fall. This means it’s time for Open House/Parent Teacher Conferences.

Open House is a strange and mysterious time. Teachers prepare for weeks in advance, only to have 100 meetings with parents and guardians (Best case scenario: Everyone shows up at the proper time. Better case scenario: The mom voted most likely to scream the loudest doesn’t show up at all).

As a parent, you hope to hear good things about your child (nothing ruins an evening like finding out that the third-grade teacher is convinced your kid is headed to prison). Administrators just hope everything goes smoothly.

They don’t want to mediate a dispute between adults (nothing like being in the middle of an argument that nine times out of 10 ends up with both sides questioning your manhood/womanhood/sanity –– it’s good to be the principal).

Students with good grades and behavior love Open House (1 percent of all kids. If you don’t believe me, look it up).  The other students consider it much like a trip to the dentist (remaining 99 percent). 

As a kid, you hope to keep your worlds separated. There’s nothing worse than seeing your teacher and parents sharing information (if you are a kid, nothing good can come out of this awkward and uncomfortable situation).

As a parent, I don’t mind going to open house, but I do have a question. I attend to talk about my child, so why did the teacher babble on and on about this other student?

I’m confused (even more than usual). Are there children out there like the teacher described? Was the teacher making stuff up about this mysterious kid who may not even exist? 

Did she think I wouldn’t notice the subtle differences between my child and this superhuman, overly polite, academic machine about whom she was telling stories?

I only say this because the child described at open house doesn’t bear any resemblance to my evil spawn (don’t e-mail me. I only use the phrase “evil spawn” because she is my daughter –– and evil). The child I fathered (allegedly, because I’ve never seen any proof, although she does look a little like me) sleeps, eats, watches TV and mooches off her mother and me.

During Open House, I sat through 10 minutes of stories about a wonderful child. I started to wonder if the teacher had confused me with someone else.

Then it hit me. There could only be one answer. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier. It was so obvious. 

Aliens.

Evidently, somewhere between my daughter’s junkyard (her room) and the school, some sort of alien creature invades my daughter’s body. This has to be it.  It’s the only explanation.

This creature (the alien, not my evil spawn) takes over and spends the school day making her do strange things. These “things” include all kinds of good behavior. Examples include listening, being polite, getting her work done in a timely manner, playing with others, and raising her hand to ask for permission before speaking.

It’s a sad attempt to impress people she hardly knows.

I found all of this strange and disturbing (I can assure you this is not how she was raised).  I could go into more detail about her odd behavior, but it makes my head hurt and brings shame to our family (more shame than usual).

The only consolation is that the aliens leave at 3:10 p.m. and return her back to us, unharmed and back to “normal”.

Maybe one day, these aliens will miss their bus and the teacher will actually get to meet my child. Then next year, we can actually have an Open House conference where we talk about my kid.