How to Play Hooky from Work on a Pupil-Free Day

How to Play Hooky from Work on a Pupil-Free Day (in 12 Easy Steps):
1. Wake up early to grade papers and therefore alleviate guilt.
2. If it's Tuesday, make pancakes for sleeping children.
3. An hour later, eat pancakes yourself, because your sleeping children are actually teenagers and will never get out of bed.
4. Attend Veterans Day ceremony in Town Park, where Life Scout son participates in flag ceremony.
5. Get schooled by awesome old people.
6. Grab lunch at Ruby's with hungry teenagers who missed breakfast.
7. Arrive at movie theater on time to take advantage of $5.50 Tuesday movie special, only to realize the rest of the city's families had the same idea and the movie sold out 20 minutes ago.
8. Change your plans: drive to the bowling alley. Arrive to realize all those same people who missed the movie are now at the bowling alley.
9. Bowl like a mad woman for an hour. Have your children say, "I just got schooled by an awesome old person." (you)
10. Go home for an hour's rest. Remember nostalgically when your teenagers were babies and slept through the MIDDLE of the day.
11. It's still Tuesday. That means tacos. And El Adobe.
12. Arrive home convinced you are the awesomest not-so-old person ever for playing hooky with your children. As a finale, sit down to read Harry Potter 4 out loud to them. Fall asleep promptly with glasses askew like an old person while teenagers stay up way too late playing video games. Remember nostalgically when playing hooky was much less expensive and less exhausting, but not nearly as much fun.