Graduation...Elementary School Style?

Last night we returned home from swim practice a little later than normal because of a pleasant pit stop to see some friends we haven't seen in a while. The visit was completely wonderful, but the ensuing chaos from the late evening was almost impossible to overcome. Although, almost quickly turned into utterly impossible when I checked the phone messages at 10pm last night. "Hello 5th Grade Parents. Just a reminder that 5th grade picture day is tomorrow." REMINDER??? I never got the first memo!! You have got to be kidding me!

Quickly I sprang into Uber Mom mode and addressed what I knew would be the most pressing issue..."honey, what do you want to wear?" I knew her choice would not be something that would be clean, easy to find or possibly even under the same roof we were currently standing under. As much as I love my girl child, she does have a knack for making some things impossibly difficult. Luckily for me she knew exactly what shirt, knew where it was but it did need a trip into the washer...STAT!

With the wardrobe issue solved, the outfit in the washer and time ticking by at a rapid pace I sent everyone off to bed. In my head I figured we could tackle any other issues in the morning but right now we were 1 1/2 hours past our normal bed time. What I didn't figure was that 1 1/2 hours was going to be made up somewhere and it happened to be the next morning. We all woke up late which didn't help the homework that didn't get done, the load of wet picture clothes in the washer or the fact that showers were skipped the night before. I quickly found myself not tackling any issues, but having the crap beat out of me by Father Time and Murphy and his frigging law! What could go wrong was going wrong and fast!

We did manage to make it to school, in the rain, and about 5 minutes late. She had the outfit she wanted, but we didn't have time to curl her hair. It was clean and blown straight and I thought very pretty, but I could tell she was a little disappointed. I hate when they get disappointed for the simple things and they manage to blow off the big issues, but I guess that is a luxury of youth. What I wasn't prepared for was her anger and frustration when school was over. "Mom, do you know what the pictures were? Do You?" Well, no I didn't. I really don't know what 5th Grade pictures consist of. "They made me put on an ugly GOLD gown. They couldn't even see my Stanford shirt!" Like the good mom that I am, I quickly jumped on her band wagon because I had just spent the last 12 hours trying to wash an outfit that no one even saw. Yes, I was pissed too!

What didn't help matters much was that I had spent the whole day working on 5th grade graduation projects. In the last couple of years I have really stepped back from volunteering, but I thought it would be nice to help with the last elementary event my daughter would have. What I didn't realize was that I was getting involved with a week long celebration of gigantic proportions. This is ELEMENTARY SCHOOL GRADUATION PEOPLE! There is a Pool Day, Field Day, Softball Game and Yearbook Day, Movie Day and an actual Ceremony Day. I don't even remember doing this much for my high school graduation, although that whole time frame is a little blurry for a multitude of reasons. Is she going to expect the same amount of hoopla for middle school?  God forbid what she is going to expect for high school. Screw a college fund, I better start socking away to make it through the graduation.

The man power that is needed to pull off these extraordinary events is just as over the top as the actual events. There are committees for each day, and some days have multiple committees. My rough estimate is that for our graduating class of about 140 students there are at least 75 parent volunteers feverishly working behind the scenes in hopes of making their young children's graduation experience memorable. With the amount of time, effort and money that is going into graduation, this better be the BEST WEEK EVER! Although, you have to remember who the audience is...a group of budding pubescent pre-teens in the throws of hormonal angst that would rather be caught dead than thinking anything their parents were involved in creating is even sort of cool. I fully expect that at the end of the week we will be lucky to get a collective "Yeah, it was alright".

For my daughter, graduation events better start picking up real soon. She is already a little disenchanted with the entire graduation scene based on the gold gown experience. For an almost 11 year old she is quite astute in her conclusion that her input or opinion regarding the entire experience doesn't really factor in. She is determined to proudly wear her Stanford shirt (that we went to the actual campus to get for her) at her graduation since she had to wear that stupid gold gown for her picture. Being the supportive mom I am, I smile and shake my head in agreement all the time trying to figure out when to drop the bomb that they will all be wearing the same shirt for graduation...so sayeth the 5th Grade Graduation powers that be.

I got a feeling we might not make it through her first graduation experience unscathed.