Yesterday, I had to put down the stack of blue books and drive over to Ian’s school for the Holiday Show.
Ian’s Transitional Kindergarten is housed in a regular public school a half an hour away in FancyTown. Since Ian takes the bus and we don’t live anywhere near the school, I don’t know any of the other parents. I am not sure whether Ian’s special needs class interacts much with the rest of the school. When I walked into the auditorium, I found a seat as far as possible from the chattering parents and opened up the New Yorker. Then I pull outed my sign that said, "I hate all people. Leave me alone."
There were a lot of men there that afternoon. But the dads were of a different species than the shaved head, flannel shirt, goatee dads in our town. Clean shaven and v-neck sweaters.
First, the Kindergarteners filed into the auditorium. And the paparazzi went mad. Camcorders and two foot long zoom lens captured the moment. If I stood on tiptoe, I could see Ian in the front row looking alternatively concerned and amused. The music teacher led the kids in her own original holiday compositions about penguins and snow flakes. Ian wasn’t singing, but he looked happy enough up there. He was doing fine, until he caught sight of the microphone and ran up and started talking into it. I think he was giving the speech from "Robots," which begins "Ladies and Gentle-robots." His teacher gave him the big hook and his performance was done.
So, I had driven a half an hour to this show and was being TORTURED by listening to other kids recite poetry and sing songs about penguins. Those shows are god awful, but are redeemed by the joy of seeing your kid on stage and fooling yourself that your kid is the most beautiful one in the room. And my kid was truly the most beautiful one up there. For the short time he was up there.
Now I was really grouchy. And then the lady next to me kept farting. And the New Yorker had too many short stories.
But as the kids were filing out of the room, Ian’s teacher stopped and pointed out my face in the crowd. What a happy boy. And I waved like all the other fools in the room.
Apt. 11d 
You’re such a curmudgeon, Laura (though I say that respectfully). I was the mom with the 2 foot zoom (no, not really, ’cause I don’t live anywhere near you). But I could have been.
You can’t imagine how cute all those kids look when you look at them through a 200 zoom :-).
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Yes, but I was just as sappy as all the other parents when my kid saw me in the crowd and his face lit up like a candle.
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I was making fun of myself here. I think that parenthood brings out the fool in all of us. It’s so irrational for every parent to think that their kid is the most beautiful in the room. It’s completely insane to think that other parents are looking at your kid and envying you. Yet we all do it. And that’s a good thing. How much fun is to be the fools in love.
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We went to our daughter’s kindergarten class yesterday for the class party. I was very pleased to see her following directions and mostly paying attention. And I was thrilled to see that she wasn’t even in the top 50% of kids acting-up. (It was the last day of class.) Yay! I suspect that her teacher’s Southern wiles and charm are working, and the ladyfication process is now underway.
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“It’s completely insane to think that other parents are looking at your kid and envying you.”
so true, and yet we do. Our pediatrician always tells us that during examinations, that our baby is “the most perfectest baby ever.” It’s very cute, and it’s quite amazing how much we believe him. It took my husband and me about two and a half years to figure that out. For the first two years we were absolutely convinced that our daughter was indeed the cutest and most amazing baby and that all the other parents must be sad that they couldn’t have her (their babies were OK, but clearly ours was amazing). We even had a bizarre discussion about having a second child on the grounds that she would be such a tough act to follow.
Just around that time, someone wrote a letter to the NYT ethicist saying that his child (adopted from China) was the most amazing child in the world, and that created an ethical problem for him, when people asked about adopting from China. Because, of course, he already had the best, perfectest child from China, so their experience had to, necessarily be worse. I think that helped us snap out of it (that and having a second child who is just as amazing as the first).
And, even as I write this, and realize that it’s irrational, I still think my children is the cutest! I fear that some of our search for “contests” as parents is to validate the irrationality, by proving objectively that our child is the “best”. An inclination that we have to actively squelch.
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