Sticks and Stars

On Friday we attended my four year old’s aforementioned Fall Family Festival. I won’t deny that I had absolutely no desire to go, that I in fact had negative desire to go, that in fact I would have turned down several moderate sums of money that they might have offered to pay me in exchange for going. But my four year old had been talking about it all week, counting down the days until the damned event, so there was no escaping.

The evening was just as useless as I expected (I was the only single parent, every other lone parent made a point of specifying where their missing husband or wife was, and I was definitely the only one wrangling a small(er) child) and it was even more stressful because my one year old wanted the tray of brownies that was located conveniently at eye level and so I was stuck wrestling him for control all night long. Plus, we were a little late so I got stuck sitting in the very front row in one of those tiny little kiddy chairs that isn’t big enough to hold one cheek, let alone the full expanse of my glorious ass.

However, the evening was (almost) entirely redeemed when I got to watch the kids get up and sing.

When the kids were directed to come to the front of the room, my four year old wound up in back off to the side. But as soon as he recognized what was happening he moved to his rightful place, in the center, in front of all the other kids. And I really mean in front. All the other kids were in two rows and he was in front of them in his own row of one.

Then the singing started. Some of the kids mumbled along with the words, some of the kids sang quietly, but no one joyfully shouted the words at the top of their lungs…except my son. The whole audience was chucking at his exuberance. And indeed, he was just so excited to be singing. For the rest of the evening parents kept coming up to me and commenting that he was hilarious and was quite the star of the show. When we got home and watched the video clips I made of his performance he asked me why everyone was clapping and cheering. I told him they were clapping and cheering because he did such a good job and he smiled a very satisfied smile and said, “Yeah.” It makes me smile just thinking about it. He was so fucking adorable.

The one thing that bugged me was that the director of the school (who was leading the singers) kept trying to quiet him down and by the time they got to the last song, she succeeded. Yes, the singing was much more…I don’t know…on key? Socially acceptable? But these are three and four year olds. I would much rather hear the overwhelming cacophony of all of them exuberantly shouting the lyrics then the barely audible sounds of them singing “appropriately.” I love all of the other teachers at my son’s school. They handle him so well, they treat him so kindly and they clearly all adore him (and indeed, what’s not to love?!). But the director, man, I don’t like her, and this is just one more reason. Let the damned kids sing how they want to!

However, this whole experience does make me think that I should find some kind of kids’ drama program or music group for my four year old. He is fearless and bold and entirely a ham and, speaking as a super shy introvert who feels intense anxiety in any group of more than two people, I’d sure like to keep him that way.

(Wanna see the cuteness? Here and here.)

This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 10:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.