Response: There's No More Room In Hell
Zombies? Sure, zombification would be a welcome relief to me at school events. From the moment I retrieve the garishly-hued flyer from my daughter’s Take Home Folder advising me of my obligation to attend the next all-school musical revue to the moment I hear the first note of an adapted Yanni song, I take a spiritual and emotional beating. I like your idea of a transformation, Queen, but I’m not sure how I’d like it to happen.
It begins, like all other traumatic event cycles, with denial. “Didn’t I have a colonoscopy scheduled that night?” “Isn’t that my night to pickup trash on the highway?” I go through all the stages of the Kubler-Ross grief cycle – I even try intercessory prayer, “Lord, prithee a termite infestation upon the grand piano of Ms. Smith the music teacher…” – but ultimately I plunk down into the uncomfortable steel-framed, rough-upholstered, universal large-open-area-meeting-space-chair resigned to my fate. I then spend the next two hours fuming and scowling, willing the possibility that Dr. Jekyll and Bruce Banner were characters based on even the slimmest splinter of truth, thereby allowing me a guilt-free rampage through the venue unburdened by any memories of the destruction.
Every year for the Christmas gala, no fewer than 1000 people cram into the hall to hear their child, grandchild, niece or nephew intone a dozen schmaltzy “winter songs” in unison with 100 other kids. The kids mumble tangentially through lyrics featuring every known new age euphemism for Christmas while Ms. Smith pounds away monotonously on the ol’ Steinway. Meanwhile hundreds of video cameras whir and cameras flash. I’ve tried everything to cope with the skull-scraping boredom of waiting – Gameboys, crosswords, sleeping, ogling soccer moms – and all I get are disapproving looks from the other parents and admonitions from the wife, “It’s not fair to the other parents,” she says.
Fair? I thought we were all in this together. I thought we all suffered the shrill stabs of children singing. I thought we all wanted to sneak in the night before and plant an IED in the piano set to detonate when a b flat was struck. I thought we were all there because we didn’t want to be the one who wasn’t there; the one everyone else labels the bad parent for not being there. That’s when I’d like to become Norma Rae. Once transformed into a mousy mill-working mom I would ascend the stage and plead with everyone to stand together and put an end to this travesty of musical education. I have a feeling the comedown’d be a bitch, though. I’d probably find myself in the backseat of a black Trans-Am gripping a strangely aerodynamic piece of a nun’s habit.
But the awards ceremonies...you're right. If any human event cries out for voodoo remedies, it's school awards ceremonies. You can never find a seat because a couple of obnoxious ladies always go to the venue straight from work and cordon off ten rows of seats for every known relative of little Susie and then guard them like a half-starved pit bull in a southside trailer park. Practically every student gets an award, every name is excruciatingly read aloud and everyone applauds while the kid clumsily shuffles across the stage to pick up his faux parchment affirmation fresh off the office printer. Inevitably, some family blurts out the old disco, "woot! woot!" That's when I begin feeling undead.
Labels: school events, Zombies
posted by St. Fiacre @ 2:20 PM,
1 Comments:
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At Thursday, May 03, 2007 8:03:00 AM,
Adjective Queen said...
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I feel like I'm right there in the room with you. At Sport's last elementary music program, I turned to SO and whispered, "Only 2 more years of these to go!" I wish I could say it helped us get through it, but that would be lying.
