Parents I haven’t met yet, and who I may not actually meet, are already messing up my plans.

Tomorrow is a clash of two things: Parents’ Day at the school where I work and the spring Keyaki Beer Festival in a nearby city. The former involves lots of well dressed men and women (and embarrassed students) and the latter involves hundreds of craft beers from all over Japan.

I convinced She Who Must Be Obeyed to go to the beer festival (My sales pitch amounted to saying “hundreds of craft beers from all over Japan” and she wen’t “okay” and as I tried to add that there was also food and that our oldest could watch our youngest while we went out she was like “you had me at hundreds of craft beers”.)

The problem is I plan to look respectable for the parents. Because I’m teaching a JHS 1 class in the afternoon the odds are I will have a large crowd and it makes both the school and me look good if I bother to wear a tie and wear clean slacks. The trouble with that is “tie” and “clean slacks” do not necessarily go with “hundreds of craft beers” especially on a warm spring day.

This leaves a couple options: 1) come home and change and then go out again, but that will steal precious beer enjoyment time. 2) Carry a change of clothes, but that will require a place to change. Also, it’s heavy.

I’ll probably change at school and then rush past the parents whilst hoping they don’t recognize me and carry the tie and formerly clean slacks in my book bag.

She Who Must Be Obeyed, though, will be attending parents’ day at our oldest’s school, which means she might need to carry a change of clothes too.

Beer is supposed to be a simple drink. This is getting complicated. But it does put me in the mood for a beer.