Sundaes and Science

"Sundaes and Science" - that was the name of the school function I went to tonight with my fourth and first graders, two little boys. Oh my, oh my.

I'm not a huge kid person. I love my kids more than life itself but there are only a few "other people's kids" that I care to be around much. When people bring in their babies to the office, I'm never among the cooing, touching, "let me hold the baaaaaaaaaybee" crowd. Our house is not the one where the whole neighborhood kid population congregates - we don't have a Playstation anymore, don't have the latest crazy toys, and our back yard sucks for kids because it's steep and xeriscaped, although not nearly as beautifully as the picture in that link. Bottom line, I can handle one or two extra kids sometimes but am never going to go out of my way to invite the marauding hordes that some other parents seem to enjoy.

So, it is with some amount of dread that I go to these school functions. The idea of a hundred elemtary school kids running around a gym (do the people who design school gymnasiums deliberately make them as loud as possible?) makes me want to crawl in a hole. But - I go, I have to, they want to go and that's what's important.

Tonight was a twofold event - first, give the kids a bunch of sugar in the form of ice cream sundaes, and then tell them to sit down, be quiet and watch a presentation. People who go to school to educate and manage children's activities thought this was a good idea, right? OK.

So, ice cream first. My 6 year old was literally shaking as he ate his ice cream. He was THAT wired - but I'll admit that a lot of it was excitement about the program coming later.

The Science portion of the evening was an hour long commercial for an after school program the school is selling. Six weeks, an hour each session, for kids to learn science stuff - it looks like a bunch of fun but it's $75 per kid so we won't be doing it but the presentation was fun nonetheless. The "Mad Scientist" was a goofy woman, her props were good, and she managed to get a couple of Newton's Laws into the program in a fun manner. All of which is well and good except that the 100 or so sugar buzzing kids sitting on the floor (mine included!) were just nuts. I never did figure out who it was, but there was one little guy who kept doing an almost ululating "om" chant the entire time, there were pockets of kids who never stopped roiling (my take on what I would call a mosh pit for 7 year olds who are technically sitting but never stop moving), and every so often the whole group would start yelling and SQUEALING at the top of their lungs.

It was all kind of interesting to watch at times - the times that I was able to disconnect enough from my own urges to squeal and run - because I'm sure there are some neat child mob psychology analyses that could be made if I had more time and less of a headache. As it is, the boys are in bed and I think a very stiff drink is in order. Can't wait for the spring dance in a couple of weeks...