Is there anything more excruciating than a grade school Christmas concert?!?

Which was made that much more painful because it required scrambling around in order to find black bottoms and white tops during the week leading up to said concert.  Daughter didn’t have black bottoms so I made her a skirt which made me feel a little like Caroline Ingalls because I had to cut-down one of mine.  Yes, it’s a sewing term.  Google it.  And son didn’t have a white top…unless you count his slowly-turning-gray uniform dress shirt which is what he was forced to wear but we “hid” it behind his red snowman tie because red accents were allowed.

To set the scene for you, let me mention that all 75 third graders played Silent Night on their recorders.  Why yes.  Yes it was just as awful as it sounds.  Stray cats dying up on stage would have sounded better.  And as a side note, my son needs to learn how to play the recorder with both hands on top of the instrument because I don’t think the hand on the bottom was adding much value.  (He said during a later conversation that his hand was all sweaty and so he did that “wrist twist” to try to keep the recorder from slipping – which didn’t make any sense because it was attached to a lanyard hung around his neck; it wasn’t slipping anywhere.)

He’s of the playing-the-recorder-is-similar-to-playing-the-harmonica school of thought.  You just THINK the tune and it happens for you.  It doesn’t matter where your hands are.

The jazzy version of O Come, Emmanuel! was slightly less terrible than the recorder extravaganza.

The manger scene?  Oh, you mean the manger scene complete with 5th-grade-girls-dressed-as-angels and talking/singing animals, right??  Okay…I guess it was cute in a terrifying lambs-really-shouldn’t-sing sort of way.

But I was so proud of my own darling 5th grade girl when it came time for her big narration scene (“but there was no room for them in the inn…”  Does anyone NOT know how this play is gonna end?!).  The microphone cut out right in the middle of her lines.  I have seen lesser women thrown by this scenario – but my little girl kept her cool.  She paused.  Adjusted the microphone.  And started her lines again.

If I haven’t said this before, then I’m saying it now – God bless us, everyone!  And no one more than the music teacher…and the kids in the Christmas concert!!