
[Note: At least one adult caregiver should refrain, you know, because.]
Take one shot every time the teacher’s internet cuts out.
Take one shot when your kid decides literally anything in the room–toys, books, garbage–is more compelling than the screen.
Take one shot every time a child picks his or her nose. (Extra shot if it’s Chloe—she eats her boogies. Chloe! Gross.)
Take one shot when the teacher cannot unmute a student because his or her parent has been too besieged by work and existential angst to read the mass email about adjusting Zoom settings.
Take one shot every time you hear another parent whisper a correct answer to their kid. (We hear you, Dad, and we thought it was a little suspicious when Aidan rhymed “fax” with “Goldman Sachs.”)
Take a shot every time an entitled little prince (cough, Aidan) brazenly neglects to raise a quiet hand.
Take one shot every time Theodore ditches the computer to jump up and down on his bed. (Theodore, why do you have a lit candle and a Japanese kitchen knife on your desk? Where are your parents? Oh, they’re both working full-time jobs, okay.)
One shot every time the class genius (cough, Amelia) spells a word correctly.
Take a shot when your kid spells something incorrectly, right on Amelia’s heels.
Take a shot every time a kid mistakes a rhyme for a word association. (Jesus Christ, Theodore, for the tenth time, “cloud” does not rhyme with “sky.” A cloud is in the sky! “Cry,” “lie” and “die” all rhyme with “sky,” take your pick.)
Take a shot when the vexed but extremely kind teacher changes subjects before you have to explain death to Theodore.
Two shots when Amelia says the wrong answer to anything, three shots if it’s a spelling error. (Haha, Amelia. How does it feel to be an idiot like the rest of us?)
Take a shot when Jaxsley turns what warrants a one-word response into a long boring story about her best friend Avabella, whom nobody in the class knows. (Drinking with kids—it’s not so different than drinking with adults.)
Another shot when Aidan kicks off show-and-tell with Dad’s Rolex Daytona.
One shot when Amelia catches you in the frame and starts spelling out a new word she spots on your bottle: T-E-Q-U-I-L-A.
Another shot when she recognizes it as Spanish.
Another shot when you realize your unsettled childhood grievances and vicarious competition with your kid’s classmates is possibly more unhealthy than your drinking during their class.
Finish your bottle when Amelia takes the initiative to spell transliterations of “tequila” in Greek and Hebrew characters, just because she can.
Shit. Chloe just ate another booger, but you’re out of booze.
Scrape yourself off the floor as Amelia continues on in Mandarin. (One day, she will probably be, like, the president, if democracy survives 2020.)
Excuse yourself from the Zoom call and crawl from the room. They’re supposed to be doing this without parents, anyway.
Megan Peck Shub is a producer at Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. She is also a writer and mom of an actual Zoom preschooler.