Who Cares . . . It's Free! (i.e., Public School)

We recently switched my son David from a Jewish day school to public school. The transition has not been as smooth as we had hoped it would be. A few problems have come up, including one really big one that had us wondering if we should switch him back to the day school. This problem is really bothering us and it is something that we need to address, but we're just not sure how to do it.

And the other little problems in the meantime? Some of them caught me off guard, but they don't bother me. Not in the least bit. Sometimes my wife Kineret complains to me about this or that, but I'm not interested. I don't want to hear about it. I really don't care because . . . hey, it's free!

It's amazing how low the bar of expectations becomes when you're not paying good money for something. I'm not saying we pulled David from day school for solely for financial reasons. Thank God we could pay the tuition. But hey, free is still free and it's hard to ignore this benefit of public school.

The truth is that at some point we may end up hiring a private tutor so that he can keep pace with limude kodesh, which would eat up any savings from the switch--and possibly cost even more than the day school. But for now I'm really enjoying dismissing our complaints with a waive of the hand, a smile and a thought of "who cares . . . it's free!"

(Yes, I'm aware that's it's not really free and that I pay for public school with my taxes. Eventually I'll start complaining about every little thing in the public school too and rant about how the cause of my discontent is being funded with my own hard-earned income. But in the meantime I'll revel in the bliss of "who cares . . . it's free!")