Pomp and circumstance
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There are some folks who pooh-pooh graduation from pre-school or kindergarten. It’s sort of the Incredibles Effect: If every little thing gets celebrated, it devalues the celebration, as it were. And some people get all blustery about how “It didn’t used to be like that in my day!”…with an implied harrumph.
OmegaMom is here to tell you that she is forty-(mumble) and still remembers her very own graduation from kindergarten from thirty-five-and-(mumble) years ago.
Or, more to the point, she remembers, very clearly, watching the other kids walk down the church aisle, carrying crepe paper streamers, while she did not.
Too young, they said. Which was the reason why I was removed from the nice Episcopalian kindergarten and inserted into the Whitman School, a private school (WS would allow kids into first grade who were deemed “too young”).
I may be remembering the details wrong, but I really really do remember the other kids walking and not me, with those pretty crepe paper streamers.
So littlies “graduating” is nothing new. And for anyone who thinks the littlies can’t remember, I just want to mention that this is one of my earliest memories, and I was about five at the time.
Today was OmegaDotter’s graduation from pre-school. Miss S., the pre-school administrator, goes all out. She rents a cap-and-gown and has all the kiddos photographed by a pro. Then, she and the others get together and choreograph songs with movements (soft Christian pop songs). She arranges for party goods to be donated. She ropes the pastor into the whole affair. Including a printed program! And pennants! And, to top it all off, she purchased autograph books for all the kiddos. (The pic to the left is OmegaDotter smiling at One and Only True Love.)
Miss S. is really into graduation. To the right is Miss S. with her heap of diplomas for the kiddos.
Y’know what? I am too. I didn’t snurfle or weep this time, for some reason. (Perhaps the rather over-the-top preaching of the new pastor distracted me. I really didn’t want to hear another verse of the Bible exhorting me to lead my children on the straight-and-narrow and bring them to church. Again. New Pastor did this about four or five times throughout the talk. Most of which was aimed at the parents, rather than the kiddos. Harrumph.)
OmegaDotter was thrilled to see everyone from school again…particularly OAOTL. The two were practically glued together. OmegaDad tells a tale about how he was teasing her about her new crush, Ted, a counselor at camp…he asked, “So is Ted your boyfriend?” OmegaDotter rolled her eyes and said, “Really, Daddy! Everyone knows C. is my boyfriend!”
Anyway, the kiddies sang, the pastor preached, the kids were handed their diplomas, and then we all hied off to the party room to partake of pizza and cake. The “signing of autograph books” was an interesting affair; the kids just aren’t quite hip to how one does this. (One kid, however, figured out that one could get phone numbers, and that, in some way, phone numbers were important, so he wandered around making sure most of the other kiddos added their phone numbers.)
And, thanks to the versatility of modern digicams, I have a sideways video of the dotter actually receiving her “diploma”.
Now all we have to do is ensure that all of this memorabilia somehow stays unsquished and locatable after the move. We’re not going to discuss all the things that OmegaDad and I are suddenly (urgently) looking for and not finding. The kind of things that you know you held in your hand and said to your spouse, “I’m going to put this somewhere where I’ll remember.”
Hah. Famous last words.
