Butterfingers

At the end of school Alex's multi-age class had a "Family Feast and Awards Program" extravaganza. Ten minutes before it started we told Alex that it was time to go. "But I'm supposed to dress up. I need to wear church clothes! And a tie!" After fussing at him for not saying anything sooner, we ironed his white dress shirt, found his red and black tie and matching socks, church shoes that fit (sort of) and headed out the door. He doesn't have a black belt, so we left his shirt untucked.

When we got there, just five minutes late, I told his teachers about his dress code. They all laughed. As I suspected, they did not issue a dress code for the performance. The kids asked what to wear and they just told them to dress nice. When a few of the clothes-horses asked "church nice?" the teachers said that was fine. His teacher told me that Alex then said that he usually wore a tie to church. For the record there were three boys in ties for the evening. Alex's friend Ian had on shorts, a dress shirt and tie, and his buddy Jamie wore shorts, a plaid shirt and one of his dad's ties with a map of the world on it. They all looked good. Especially when they rocked out to the musical portion of the program.

A high point of the evening was the class's rendition of "We Are Family." They modified the lyrics to include "in a multi-age ant colony." (Ants are their theme.) Many pictures and videos were taken. Each of the family groups (8 groups made up of 5 children with a mix of kindergarten and first graders) sang a song. They were very cute and did a great job. After that, there were the awards.

Each child got a candy award - Snickers for a child that's funny, Peanut M&M's for someone "small, sweet and a little nutty," etc. Alex got the Butterfingers award for breaking the most things accidentally. On the way home Art asked him about breaking things. He said, "Son, you don't break that much at home, why do you at school?" Alex replied, "Well, they have a lot more stuff." I tried not to laugh. Art said that wasn't a very good reason, to which Alex answered, "It's SCHOOL property, Dad." I guess Art shouldn't worry as long as it's not OUR stuff.

It was a late night, and Alex didn't get in bed with the lights off until after 9. It was rough getting him up the next morning. He wasn't unhappy about it; he just didn't see a need to go to school anymore. He thought the program wrapped it all up nicely, and they should be done now. I kind of agreed. Art said he didn't particularly want to go to work, either. In the end everyone agreed that we had to go whether we wanted to or not. Alex was persuaded to go (at least for that day) because he wanted to get people to sign his yearbook.