Thursday, June 07, 2007

Oboist of the Year


Everyoneceandawhile I have those moments when I realize just how different my life is from everyone else's. Tony's graduation from sixth grade was one of those times.

First of all, we heard nothing about the event until the night before. Apparently, eveyone else's parents had it on their calendars for weeks, but Tony absolutely refuses to bring stuff home from school. No notes make it here, or homework, or discipline slips. His IEP meeting was an eye opener, but I'll just leave that for now.

So, we're sitting in the graduation emotionally recovering from the 15 minutes we had to decide whether or not to let Mike come home so he wouldn't have to sit in jail until trial, and we're watching the same 40 kids from the hundreds of sixth graders get multiple awards.

I found myself wondering what it would be like to sit there politely applauding because my child was the oboist of the year.

And I also wondered what it would be like to have and be able to use a camera that could actually capture the handshake and diploma grab instead of a foggy off-colored shot of the aftermath.

Heavy sigh.

3 comments:

Kari said...

At the meeting this school had for parents of children who will enter Kindergarten this fall a young mom raised her hand. She said something like this, "My daughter already knows how to read and write. What will she do when the other kids are working on those skills?"

It took all my self control to keep from raising my hand and saying, "Don't worry, your daughter will be busy watching my daughter have rages and meltdowns which will probably result in a complete evacuation of their Kindergarten classroom. Be assured that your genius daughter won't be bored."

We do live in a different world, don't we? The strange thing is that I am glad that I am no longer that Kindergarten mom and my self esteem is not tied to my children being ____ of the year. ~Kari

Mary said...

We had a similar experience this year. There was a spring concert (and in our small town, everyone shows up for it) at the school and we didn't know a single thing about it until the morning it was happening. That's when my kids informed me they needed to dress up. Neither hubby nor I could make it due to conflicting schedules, and it still burns me that they didn't even think of letting us know in order to come. It's definitely a different world.

FosterAbba said...

I so relate to what you are saying in this post. I have my own similar story that I posted on my blog.