Though Ira suspected that Theo’s Lady love probably had a lot to do with it, it was pretty much impossible to avoid a rush of delight at the thought that the kids had mentioned him favorably at school to their teachers. There was no holding back the smile, which only grew fonder as Alida chirped up that she’d come with them on their form-filling expedition, frighteningly dull as it was bound to be for her.
An uneven patter of steps echoed in the still hallway as Ira happily followed the trio of Staas, Alida, and the endearingly bubbly Miss Emi down to the office. Her little curious glances into the windows and doors of open classrooms didn’t go unnoticed, if only because Ira was doing the same. But the sight-seeing was brief and in no time at all they’d reached the end of the corridor, where there was a minute’s wait in the office while Emi poked around for the papers.
They all trooped out and Ira nodded towards Emi, both for the advice and the door-holding. “Okay. I’ll definitely keep that in mind. Thanks.” Like most reasonably responsible adults, Ira always had his ID on him in his wallet, but it never hurt to know ahead of time what to expect.
Emi brought them back a ways down the hall to an empty classroom. Ushered in by the teacher, they all seated themselves at one of the low circular tables, Ira opting to sit straight on the carpeted floor rather than try to fold his long limbs into one of the tiny chairs. Staas handed him a handful of the papers, holding on to a couple that he had to fill out himself. Ira took the sheaf given to him with a smile of thanks and pulled out a pen of his own from his pocket, scribbling a few times on the inside of his wrist to get the ink flowing first. There was a pause for a second to remind himself to print in all capitals, not the casual cursive scrawl he was used to spitting out on paper.
He flicked through the forms, examining each section carefully before answering the blanks in a neat hand. It was all fairly straightforward, but Ira didn’t want make a stupid mistake and accidently leave the kids stranded if some emergency should occur, god forbid. Concentrating on his writing, he was mostly quiet, piping up once or twice to ask for clarification from Staas or Emi about a particular question.