Monday, June 02, 2008

• Miss G "graduated" from the upper elementary.  Her school holds a moving up ceremony that is beyond painful to sit through.  Since hers would be my third moving up ceremony, I thought, as an experienced parent, I could arrange things to maximize my own comfort and convenience.   I arrived late, on purpose, in order to avoid the speeches. Thus, I unwittingly shot myself in the foot,  because  the tricky buggers had rearranged the ceremony, so the speeches were in the middle, and I arrived just as they were starting.  Not only that, I couldn't find a seat.  A man, who must have been representative of the fire marshal directed me to the balcony, where he claimed there were seats, and there were, only they were all in the middle of the rows, and each row was packed with 300 pound people.  I could not find a single seat that would not require me to force my body through a narrow gauntlet of padded flesh and auditorium chairs in order to get to it.  Additionally, all the people sitting in the end seats were giving me hostile looks that said, "I ain't moving for YOU." 
  
  Discouraged, I returned to the large, deep, wing between balcony sections and stood there unobtrusively, but the fire marshal didn't like that and told me I HAD to take a seat.  I tried to explain to him that I can not squeeze myself past a long line of large, hostile people, but he couldn't understand and clearly thought I was being irrational, so I left the aisle and sat on a large pouffy ottoman in the vestibule, where, alas, I could still hear the speeches.  The chairman of the school board spoke first.  He gets props for being brief and relevant.  Next came the superintendent of schools.  She gave a very long speech, the theme of which was overcoming adversity and always doing your best.  To illustrate her point, she told a story about a "little girl she once knew."  This little girl was a very good little girl who always did what she was told and always tried hard to be good.  Then one day the unthinkable happened:  the little girl forgot to bring her book to school when she had specifically been told always to bring her books to school.  The superintendent spoke for a very long time about the little girl's thoughts and feelings and the reactions of every single adult even tangentially connected to the little girl.  Finally, came the big reveal:  I was that little girl.  Good grief.  I considered walking out to my car and getting my book.
  
  More speeches followed--the principal of the upper elementary, the principal of the middle school.  He concluded his speech by bellowing "ARE YOU A CHAMPION?"  to which the kids were supposed to respond, "YES!"  He did this many times. 
  
  The music teacher sang a song. She wrote it herself.  Something about catching moonbeams and wishing upon stars.  I had arrived half an hour late, and I began to wonder what it was, exactly, I had missed. 
  
  Next came the awards.  Miss G gets excellent grades and her behavior is always exemplary, so I knew she would not be getting any awards. The awards are given to kids who need encouragement and not to those who actually achieve anything.  That's OK.  This school is the only upper elementary for the entire city of Charlottesville, so the student body runs the full gamut of the socioeconomic scale and the emphasis at these ceremonies is always on encouraging the kids who don't have many advantages.  Hence the platitude-laden speeches and the painful earnestness of the music teacher's song.  Each award was presented by a different group--and each representative of each group gave a speech.  Naturally.  The guy from the Rotary Club spoke for ten full minutes.  
  
  This whole time, the vestibule, where I relaxed on my pouffe, was as busy as Grand Central Station with people walking in and out, chattering to each other, talking on their phones, pushing strollers with crying babies.  I decided that with all theses people walking in and out, I might be able to steal one of their seats, and I did, in the far upper reaches of the balcony on the extreme right side of the auditorium.  It was, at least, an aisle seat. 
  
  At last, the big moment:  the presentation of certificates.  Parents are asked to hold their applause until each class has recieved their certificates, so that all names could be clearly heard, but this was a rowdy audience--the audience is always rowdy at the upper elementary graduation--so as each name was called, the audience errupted in screams and hoots.  Indeed, most of the screams and hoots were coming from my section of the auditorium.  "That's my baby, right there,  THAT'S MY BABY," screamed one woman as her daughter walked across the stage.  I would have been amused, but my mood was soured by my encounter with the fire marshal.  Some children did not get screams and hoots.  These were the children whose parents had been taught how to behave in public. 
  
  The principal concluded the ceremony by asking parents to remain in their seats until the students had left.  This was downright funny because parents were actively leaving as she made her request and continued to exit the auditorium, and there was an impossibly confusing melee outside--a nightmare for teachers who had to get their kids onto buses and take them back to school. 
  
  I had been invited to go out to lunch with five of Miss G's friends and their mothers.  A little while later, we were all seated at two outdoor tables in the cool shade of some trees on Charlottesville's downtown mall, the girls at one table, looking charming in their best dresses, and the mothers at another.  None of us mothers knew each other very well, and one mother, unfolding her napkin and placing it daintily in her lap, said crisply, "Well, that was a nice ceremony."  For a split second, the conversation balanced on a knife's edge.  Would we tear apart the ceremony like sharks at a feeding frenzy or would we pretend to take the mother's statement at face value?  After the briefest of pauses, the rest of us agreed that it had been very nice and the conversation turned to summer camps and vacation plans.
  
  
  

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