Math & Musicals

The Boy is taking part in some kind of math competition today, and since it’s being held here on campus, I went up to the student union to see if I could have a peek and wish him well. I found him in the ballroom, surrounded by hundreds of kids with huge calculators sitting at round tables, fidgeting, swinging their feet, pulling their hair, sucking their teeth, and sniffling. I love my kid and his friends, but I could never stand to be a teacher. Gah!

I got there as the final questions were going on, so I sat with some other adults along the wall, chit-chatting in a respectfully low tone, so as not to disturb the young mathletes at work. Do you know that one of the women running the show grabbed a microphone and chastised the adults—not only for making too much noise (which we weren’t, but which would have been understandable if we had been), but because she said she could hear numbers coming from the sidelines! Like we were cheating! The man and woman I was sitting with were equally surprised and put off. I started whisper-shouting, “Five! Five!” The man laughed, and the woman started (softly) banging her foot off the floor, counting like a trained horse. Another lady came over and said, “If we wanted to cheat, we’d text them the answers. Duh.” Duh, indeed.

I’m glad I went up, though, as The Boy was happy to see me.

I’ll see more kids tonight, as The Boy and I will be meeting some other kids and parents to have dinner and then go to the opening performance of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, this year’s Middle School musical. The Boy is not in it, and wanted nothing at all to do with it, but is excited to go see it. I don’t think I’ve seen kids this age perform since I was but a poor Catholic school kid in many an impoverished production of those incredibly horrible musicals specifically composed to be performed by school kids, so this will be a treat. I think.

I mean, it would have to be. One of our school productions (held in the cafeteria that also served as our gym) included a medley of songs from commercial jingles (around the time Coca Cola wanted us to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony). In addition to the Coke song (we ended the show by dimming all the lights and HOLDING LIT CANDLES as we sang), we covered Band-Aids and Kodak. Why? No idea. The most memorable shows—for me, at least—were actual musicals, rather than just concerts. Once we traveled through time exploring . . . transportation, singing songs about cave people Rock and Martha and their wheel, Henry Ford and his Model T, and perambulating babies in The Baby Buggy Boogie. The absolute best (worst), though, was The Greatest Christmas Card, featuring G.T. G.T., you see, stood for Glad Tidings. The girl who played G.T. had to sing:

Mr. Glad
Mr. Tidings
Mr. Messenger
I’m a real go-getter
When you get to know me better
You can call me
G.T.

Ugh! Terrible! G .T. escorted hallucinating children through time to check out various Christmas cards, teaching about wassail bowls, and ending up at the nativity, where the camels sang an Eeyore-like song called Poor Us, and then shepherds sang a sort of barbershop quartet song about how a shepherd has a very hard life (a very lard life). Shudder. But here's proof that it existed as more than a bad dream:



I can’t believe our poor parents had to just sit there and take it.