As we were preparing for the elementary school musical last night, Wanda said, “I want to have my hair down for the show.”
This is code for, “It would be my greatest pleasure to look like my mom forgot to comb my hair tonight. She is bad at hygiene.”
“You’re supposed to look like an animal. How about if I put it in two little buns that look like ears?!”
“No.”
Somehow, I convinced her to let me try it and see if she liked it. Messy buns. She loves messy buns because they make her look like a high school volleyball player. She doesn’t know that’s why. But, that’s pretty much why.
Not this time. This time, the messy buns made her sob.
“Please, Mom, please. Don’t make me wear my hair like this!”
“But it’s the cutest thing I have ever seen in my life.”
“I KNOW!! I LOOK LIKE A TODDLEEEERRRRRRR! WAAAHHHH!”
We compromised with a Rey-From-Star-Wars-Style mohawk, like a mane… to go with her bat costume. And then this morning I wore my hair in two cute buns to the bus stop. I guess I showed her… something.
Our amazing school music teacher puts on about a million musical productions at the end of each school year. She. Works. HORD.
So hard, in fact, that the kids get confused by it.
Tonight at dinner, Wanda said, “Our music teacher lives at the school, like actually lives there. She eats her meals there. She sleeps there. It’s her home.”
While Laylee and Magoo tried to convince her there was no way this was true, I preferred to ask for details.
“Really? That is so interesting. Do all your teachers live at the school?”
She looked at me in disbelief. “No, mom! Just the music teacher.”
“Who told you this?”
“Pretty much Mrs. Q.” (the first-grade teacher)
So I asked Mrs Q about it at the performance tonight. She laughed and said we need to teach Wanda what an “idiom” is. When we say, “The music teacher lives at the school, it is not, necessarily, literal.” Maybe some teachers do. But ours doesn’t. Some men live in airports. Their names are Tom Hanks.
Anyway, the show tonight is one that’s been recycled every few years and it turns out to be the same one Laylee performed in her early days of elementary school. It also turns out that both girls had a solo in the same song. It is our family legacy.
Laylee:
And 7 years later, Wanda:
The force is strong with these two.
I will point out a few of things.
1. Laylee’s costume is better because parents weren’t in charge of finding costumes that year.
2. Wanda’s costume was made for three-year-old Magoo and it’s riding mighty high on her, but she refuses to relinquish it. She treasures it greatly
3. Wanda was robbed of a dramatic exit when the music teacher told her to stay at the mic until the end of the song and I feel that most keenly. The exit was really where Laylee got the chance to establish herself as a consummate performer on the elementary stage. Wanda, alas, may never get that chance.
