My little girl turns 8 on Saturday! Last night was spent making cupcakes for today’s birthday party at school. (There’s no school this Friday, so they’re celebrating today.)
This got me to thinking; Remember how cool it was to take a whole bunch of cupcakes or something into school for your class? Or how fun those parties were that you’d have in your classroom – for Valentine’s Day (did you make a mailbox for Valentine’s to be delivered to your desk?), or Halloween, or Christmas (well, back in my school days we had Christmas parties in Public Schools. Now they have “Holiday” parties, so that folks of all faiths can celebrate together. I think that’s good.). I remember St. Patricks Day parties, where we all wore green and ate green snacks. Man, those were just the best – you’re in school, but having a total free-for-all party?! I’ll always remember what a treat those felt like!
On the flip side of that, I remember a moment from one of those parties as a kid that was an emotional trauma: On Halloween, in First Grade, we got to wear costumes to school. No masks, though. Well, I went in my very very awesome store bought Spider-Man costume. (This was before I’d discovered that DC Comics like Batman and The Justice League were way better!). Well, since we couldn’t wear masks, my mom drew the Spider-Man mask on my face with face paint. Just a black grid of lines, matching the lines on the costume. When I got to school, several boys teased me mercilessly about the lines on my face! Whoo boy, I got so upset and embarassed and started sobbing, and ran to my teacher. Mrs. Bright punished the boys and helped me wash off my face and dry my eyes, but then I felt bad that I’d washed it off after my mom had worked so hard on it. So I don’t remember much else about the actual party, just the trauma of being teased like that, and then the conflicting emotions of Mrs. Bright cheering me up again mixed with feeling bad about washing off something my mom had done for me!
Come to think of it, I wonder if this whole event is WHY I like DC Comics better than Marvel?! 🙂
Andybody else got any school memories they’d like to share?
Tony Caselli 
Ohhhhh I can’t remember anything specifically but I do remember, in my deepest gut, that feeling when I would be embarrased by and/or completely hide something my parents worked very hard on. That’s a horrible feeling.
So much so that later in life I just learned to suck it up and be the big lame-o with the overly enthusiastic parents, pretty much straight through to where my mother was Band Fruit Mom my senior year in HS. *Shudder*
8 is so great. Fairly independent but still cuddly. Happy Birthday to her!!
Okay, what is a Band Fruit Mom? Is this something I should know about?
Sheesh. You Drama Nerds never did pay any attention to what we Band Geeks were up to!!
In late fall the marching band would sell Band Fruit in order to raise money for uniforms and Band Camp. The band geeks would collect up a bunch of orders and then a truckload of fruit would be delivered to some warehouse out in Savoy or something (rented by The Band Boosters). The Band Fruit Mom, aka my MOTHER, would sit out there in an old lawn chair and make sure each band member got the fruit he or she had ordered.
Her other task was wailing on any hooligans that tried any shenanigans out there in the Band Fruit Warehouse and being mostly carloads of High School students without adult supervision (except for my mother) there were shenanigans aplenty.
An aside here– my HS crush was on a boy named Flanigan. I was always in the mood for Flanigan Shenanigans. But I digress.
AND THEN– worst of all– the band geeks rarely sold an even truckload, and the Band Fruit Mom had to come up with some sort of creative way to get rid of the extra fruit.
My mother’s brilliant idea was to take the extra fruit to the K-MART PARKING LOT and sell it out of the back of our rusty blue VW Van. Out there in public for all the world to see in her capri stretch pants and flip flops. JEEZ. Talk about your white trash nightmare.
So the moral of the story is– plan now for good ways to embarass your daughter. It’s your JOB.
The End.
By Mary.
P.S. I bought some fruit from a Band Geek myself this year, so apparently the saga continutes.
LOL Drama Nerds -vs- Band Geeks!
WOW! That’s a hilarious story! How fun! *chuckling*
I don’t remember our Band ever selling fruit. There were a lot of Candy sales in our High School. “Hey, wanna buy a candy bar? It’s for the Band.”
The VW van full of fruit is a great image, though! Aaaahh, the things we do for our kids! 🙂
free for all parties=good. ps-maggie and i have almost the same birthday. mine’s sunday.
Yes, I know your birthday’s coming up! You’re gonna be how old?
25!!!!! i’m so excited.
Oooh – the big Quarter Century!! Excellent milestone!
Some of us, sadly, are way past that… 🙂
Here’s my story….
Picture it. 1986. Rochester Michigan. Sixth grade. Halloween. I am dressed as Scarlett O-Hara (or something like her only with a platinum blong wig). Big pink fru-fru dress that I LOVED. With a bit of clevage apparently (I blossomed early) because the boys in the class thought I was Dolly Parton, not a blond Scarlett. We had to do a big parade to all the classes- it was totally humiliating. Then later on when I want trick-or-treating with my neighbor (a boy) who I think was dressed as some sort of ghoul or something-the adults called us Beauty and the Beast. Which wasn’t right either but I liked that a heck of a lot better than Dolly Parton!!!
Oh, poor thing! Big Pink Fru-fru dress, how cute!! Damn those boys for obsessing over breasts!
Beauty and the Beast! Creepy Boy and Cleavage Girl, more like! 🙂