2009 Christmas Concert

Last night we had Alison’s Riverside Christmas Concert. Since this will most likely be Ali’s last concert at Riverside, we wanted to make sure we got a good seat. So we got to school an hour before the concert started. The concert is split up into two parts, K-2nd grade and then 3rd-5th grade. This year we don’t have to sit thru both of them, and the parents are usually crazier for the little kids, so the first half is usually crazy. And guess what? There were already people there and all the front row seats were taken. It is really annoying that you can just throw a jacket on a chair, and then leave for an hour, come back, and just expect to get those seats. I wouldn’t have a problem with saving a seat if you were actually there! But we figured we’d suffer through it. We were actually directly in front of where Ali was standing and we were on the aisle, so we figured we’d be OK.

The second complaint is with respect to the parents. Now I don’t want to sound as if I think we are better than any of the other kids/families at Riverside, but what is the deal with getting there early, and then just letting your kids run wild all over the gym, all over the risers, and in and out of all the seats? Apparently behavior is not a big priority with these parents. We let Alison go talk to a couple of her friends but she was not allowed to go running all over causing trouble.

My next question is why do we always seem to attract the losers? For what seems like every single year (though I am sure I am wrong) we always sat by many of the same parents, and they were the epitome of the white trash stereotype. They were parents of kids in Sarah’s class, so I thought this year we would be safe. Well it wasn’t to be. The other parents who sat near us all smelled like a dirty ashtray, or looked like they hadn’t bothered showering, or had hair-dos straight out of about 1992. Nice look people. By the end of the show, I was feeling sick from inhaling the smoke fumes off of the family that sat in front of us!

Finally, I realized that with Alison, we have really nothing in common with most of the families of the kids in her grade range. Sure there are one or two families, but for the most part, I couldn’t care less about the families. With Sarah and her class, Kris and I always mingled/talked with her friends’ parents and it was always fun to go to her school events. Not so with Ali. We had no one there to talk to last night. It was really sort of depressing.

I'll pot a picture or two of Ali once I download them.