Do they really need an education?

By now, if you've been paying attention around here at all, you are aware that I think children are the most adorable creatures on earth and I cherish every minute I can bask in their endless screams streams of joyful play. I mean, if it weren't for these innocent sweet beacons of light, how on earth would us adults ever navigate the dark waters of life?

I am dedicated to children, and that's why I have been looking forward to "Spring Fling" for weeks now. Spring Fling is the fund raising event the school puts together every year. What they do is devise all kinds of idiotic fun ways for us parents to part with our cash to support our children's education while sugaring them up and teaching them the valuable lesson of how to not cry just because you can't win the ring toss every single time and come home with fifty weird tiny rubbery florescent stretchy thingies that the dog will choke on deep in the night. All of this during melt-down hour.

These are valuable life lessons folks.

These school fund raising events are designed on the assumption that what all adults love to do more than anything in the entire world is to be penned up with five hundred other children (many of whom have impressive hacking coughs) who have been given the green light to get WILD, along with all of their respective predominantly unmedicated parents who have just gotten off work. Obviously what we've all been dreaming about all day is getting in line for fifteen minutes with our fidgety kids so that they can participate in a cheesy blow-up obstacle course that they will complete in roughly five seconds and immediately want to do again.

The obstacle course is right next to a game that the devil himself must have made up just to torture me: a game in which two children pump air into balloons that are attached to a medieval looking device that, once the balloon has become as enlarged as a baboon's ass, will pop the balloon. The child who pops their balloon first wins. I'm not really sure what kind of a mind it must have taken to create such a carnival game but it's probably a good thing that I will never meet the person who did.

The main thing is that it's all about the kids. That's why we all go to those things, right? We can't just give the school money because they know that lots of us don't have money to throw at an educational institution. They know that the only way to milk us is to create an event that is irresistible to children. No parent is going to say to their little cutie pie "I'm sorry honey but we can't go to the Spring Fling because I'm allergic to large gatherings of children and am an ogre."

Both of which I'm beginning to believe are true statements. I get kind of twitchy and agitated around too many kids*. I have to confess that I had a strong urge to draw a chalk circle around myself, five feet in diameter, and insist that no one cross the chalk unless they want to put themselves at serious psychological risk. However, that would surely stigmatize Max for the duration of his life so I showed great restraint and didn't whip out any chalk.

(You will not be at all surprised to know that Philip makes a much better school volunteer than I do.)

But in all seriousness, I think I smell a nerve burning. And I'm pretty sure I needed it.



*This number changes according to many factors such as how much sleep I've had, whose children they are, what time of day it is, and what sort of environment I'm in. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that generally speaking, if there are more than four children present, I start to feel my nerves go into deep fry.