There's No Excuse

I held an event about a month ago for parents of students who are eligible to take classes at the community college while simultaneously taking high school classes aka dual enrollment.  Well, I would think that if I'm offering something free and that will benefit the future of your child, then anyone would show up right?  Wrong, out of a possible 70 families that were invited to attend, only about 15 showed up.  I was shocked!  Here I am offering free college to students and families, but only a few showed up, but the show must go on and it did.  I was immediately able to tell that the families who showed up were very serious about their child taking advantage of this wonderful opportunity.  Now to be fair, the evening of the event it rained cats and dogs, but the rain ended an hour or so before my presentation took place and I waited for another 5 minutes after the advertised start time, just to give families a chance to come in, but the ones who were coming were already seated and patiently waiting for me to begin.
There is no excuse when it comes to planning for the future of your child. NONE. ZERO. ZILCH.  My father didn't learn how to drive until I was in the 5th grade, at which point he bought a car (paid cash), and begin transporting my sister and I wherever we needed to go.  However, before he had a car, he used his ability to walk and ride his bicycle to get from point A to point B; that included going to work, going out to eat, and leaving work to come check on myself due to any behavior issues that I might experience at school.  My dad would ride his bicycle in the rain, in the humid, hot South Georgia summer, and in the cold; there was no where that he couldn't go, especially if it was pertaining to my sister and me.  The car he purchased in 1997 was old and it often didn't work, so we would have to resort back to walking or doubling up on his bicycle (one of us on the handle bars and one on the seat with dad), but we made it work and there was never an acceptable excuse for why things couldn't or didn't get accomplished.
So what's your excuse? 
If it's about your child, plan for their future, regardless of what you have going on, make every effort to support your child.  Yes, there were times when my father couldn't leave work or my mother couldn't make it to an event, but they made arrangements for someone to show up in their place and relay the information back to them.  In fact, because teachers were so awesome, they would come to events and report them back to parents, because they cared.
There's no excuse.  As my husband would say, "Are you going to BBQ or mildew?".