Kindergarten and Pre-K had an open house at school this evening. I seriously considered skipping it, but my girls had been so excited about it, and have missed so much fun at school this week, I decided we should go.
Because of my late decision making, we weren't really prepared for an evening in public of Hoity Toity Town. I left the house thinking "at least we're all dressed". Emma was wearing all black, including a little skirt that kept falling off of her, because she wanted to "match" and "be fancy". She also had on purple snow boots. Madi's outfit was more pulled together, except her pants didn't exactly fit and I forgot to pull her hair back. I didn't even want to notice what the boys were wearing. Didn't matter, anyway, because I pulled a tight jacket over a giant t-shirt and stuck my hair in a baseball cap.
When we got there, I thought maybe they had sent home a "black tie" notice on one of our sick days. All the dads were in their work clothes, which, you would think I could identify with, but I didn't see one blue collar type dad there. The scrubbiest-dressed dads were literally wearing surgeon's scrubs.
I overheard a few conversations between the men who were just meeting, talking about flying to so-and-so and trying to get back in time to catch a plane to somewhere-else. If one guy had more places to go, the other guy would go all "Well, nice to meet ya, man" all loud, because it doesn't matter where you're going if you're louder than the other guy.
It reminded me of a scene I witnessed yesterday when a strange dog was barking at Shucks through the fence. They barked for awhile, then Shucks chased him about halfway along the fence line. The strange dog stopped to pee on a fence post. As soon as he turned away, Shucks went and peed on the same post. The other dog, not to be outdone, came back to pee in the same spot. Shucks said, "You can pee all you want, but it's still my fence. Nice to meet ya, man!" and walked away with his head held high.
There was one mom dressed like me tonight, meaning, she hadn't had time for makeup and curling irons or even a brush, and her jacket may not have been smaller than her t-shirt, but her sweatpants were. I couldn't stop to make friends, though, because she was also surrounded by a ten-foot circle of kids...we just gave each other a nod from across our sea of children and went on our way.
I did try to talk to a few of the elite crowd, but Donovan had an unfortunate case of the gassies, and because he insisted I carry him the entire time, there weren't many people who wanted to get close enough to us to chat.
The girls had a great time showing off their classrooms, which made the evening worth it. Who needs Hoity Toity when we can be country together? Or whatever you call little black dress with purple snow boots.
