what's in a vowel?

[woolymonkey]

Please help me say what I am!

I'm a British mother, in Britain and I have to sign up for Edmodo if I want any communication with the monkey school, a British comprehensive. To create an account, I must state my relationship to the monkey boys.  The options are:

Dad
Mom
Other

I am tempted to tick 'Other'.  What would you do?

For the record, I would be happy to call myself a mom if I was in the US.  But I'm not and nor are my kids, their school or their teachers.

And, yes, I realise this is pretty minor.  Not like the time when the county music service decided that, in order to organise trumpet and violin lessons for the monkey boys, they needed to know phone me and ask if either of them was adopted.  The only answer they got was a stunned silence and 'Why on earth would you need to know that to arrange music lessons?'  I don't know which box she ticked after that, but they've been having the lessons ever since and nobody's asked again.

Comments

[dorispossum.livejournal.com]

It is more personal, so I get really fed up with students who call me 'Miss' when they've spent six months debating the dark corners of human nature in my classroom. (Some are just too idle to bother remembering teachers' names - we live in cupboards after all - which is ironic given their sensitivity to the most minor mispronunciation of their own monikas, which they expect you to memorise within a week of their arrival.) I tell them if they want to be that formal, they can address me as 'Maam'...

Like you, I adapt to whatever level of formality parents initiate, but always initiate contact with the formalities. Once we've met, things tend to change, but like I said, Proper Introductions must be made.

And don't even get me started on cold callers who start with first names...