Hairy school performance

Almost all of the two hundred chairs were filled. Last night was Family Night for my 3&4 year old classes, and they did so well at their Spring Sing. I checked myself in the mirror before going on. No food in my teeth, my hair was reasonably styled even if that one monkey-ear kept poking out like a prairie dog from its hole. No slip showing, necklace laying straight. Ready! Set! Action! The palm recorders were rolling.

Oh yes, a few kids fidgeted, one little girl played with the blue velvet curtain on stage, a boy bounced like Tigger, two had to leave to go potty, and one girl cried and held her ear, so I dismissed her. Ear ache or panic, in either case, she wasn't going to perform.
Each child spoke into the microphone and introduced him/herself. My little boy with a developmental condition held the mic a bit too long and belted out an impromptu song instead of his name, which brought the house down.

The kids did very well. They sang, recited poems and fingerplays, came up with creative responses about how to get a dinosaur through a door that was too small, and they walked across the balance beam.

As my coworker readied the stage with props for The Three Brown Bears, I saw it. I was mortified. It was nothing like the holiday performance when a little boy lost his pants when he was jumping up and down. It was far worse.

I need reading glasses. They are magnifiers to the 'umpth degree'. I don't know why I didn't remove them when I was finished reading. But if you've been following my blog lately, you know that I'm slipping a bit. If only my glasses had slipped off my nose. I gazed down at my feet, at my open-toed shoes. I looked out into the audience to see if anyone else had seen what I had just seen. Nobody was watching me, no camera lenses or fingers pointed at me, as I imagined. There on my big toes were four wild black hairs sproinging every which way! I had nipped the ones on my lip and clipped that stray thing that grows out of my nose like a weed after a rainy day. But on my TOES! I'd never seen that before, and I shave my legs everyday.

I stood like an embarrassed child shuffling her feet, trying to retract those turtle head toes back into my patent leathers.

Every young girl gets the 'talk' before puberty about womanhood, but nobody explains the crop of wild hairs that take residence once you pass GO. Have I had these fuzzy toes all this while? Were you all too polite to point it out? My razor has been put to the test. Ladies don't just look in the mirror, look down.