~ Trying to keep a straight face ~

You remember your elementary school music programs, right? You had the kids who loved music and were pretty good at it, who were loving every minute, the kids who loved music and were no good at it, but were still having a good time, and the kids who really could care less about music, and were only having a good time because they had a half a dozen kids within easy "bothering" reach on the bleachers.

We recently had our 5th grade music program, and it's always been interesting to be on the other side of the bleachers.

During one of my earlier years of teaching, we had no auditorium in our building, which meant our programs were at the high school a few blocks away. During this program, because there wasn't a lot of room on stage, some classes had to leave the stage and wait in a nearby classroom while the other classes were performing, then go back on stage. One parent got wind of this and decided to tag along while we were in the hallway, giving her already hyper daughter Snickers bars and Mountain Dew in between songs. Needless to say, this concert did not go well.

Thankfully, we now have our own auditorium, with a stage big enough to accomodate everyone. At our dress rehearsal for the program, in between chuckling over my enthusiastic (and rythmically challenged) clapper whose short stature put him right in the front row and giving death glares to the kid in the back row giving devil horns to the kid in front of him, I spotted D in the back row.

His face was twisted and puckered, tongue protruding, and his eyes crossed as he tried to watch where his tongue was going. I tried to give him the death glare but failed. I wanted to giggle instead.

I tried again. No such luck. And he knew it, too, the little stinker.

The song began and D's facial gymnastics came to a halt. I asked him later what he'd been doing. "I was bored. I was trying to get my tongue to touch my nose." I tried not to laugh as I told him, for his mother's sake, not to try that at the actual program. He tried not to laugh when he asked me why not and I told him so he didn't look stupid in front of all the parents.

Sharing the story with his mother later that week, she just shook her head and said, "It could have been so much worse..."