In the beginning, it was cute. There were costumes. Toddler-Man clapped at the end of each number. And yet, it was the production that wouldn’t end.

A few days ago, my daughter came home with a note from school saying essentially: “Come to the school on Tuesday night at 6:00 p.m. for a celebration. Performers need to be there at 5:50.” Performers? What?

“Honey? Is that you? Are you performing at your school?”

“Yeah, there’s a program. We’re singing ‘Wheels on the Bus’.”

Oh, well, great. Sounds kind of fun. But then, oh, then, I have been to hell, and it is a packed cafeteria/auditorium/gymnasium filled with parents and “alumni” with no less than 30 numbers on the program! There were kindergarteners in duck hats, school board members being honored, pictures of random alumni that nobody cared about(for an elementary school, people! Alumni, I tell you! This is what’s wrong with America today). The narration in the middle of each number was from mumbling fourth graders with no mikes, and let me just say, it was not the most pleasant place, temperature-wise. 500+ sweating people who haven’t eaten dinner and thus have extremely stale breath, and random babies and toddlers (including mine) with less than fresh diapers, packed into an elementary school “multi-purpose room” could be, quite possibly, the most odiferous place on earth!

At first, it was kind of cute, and I thought it would be a fun little thing to do before settling into our evening routine. I did not know it would go on for two hours. My daughter did, indeed, get up and sing ‘Wheels on the Bus.’ Along with 2 other numbers, with all the other grades doing multiple numbers as well. Hello! These are not professionals! Nobody wants to see this, even if it is our own kids. My personal favorite was the good 2 minutes it took for each class to file off and on the “stage” between each number. That was just GREAT!

The production quality was not what you would call “good” or even “fair” - we could barely hear a thing, and yet, I’m not entirely sure that was a bad thing. Toddler-Man happily did the actions for ‘wheels’. Then the endless torment began, and instead of clapping and shouting ‘yay! in his cute little way, whenever applause began, he would turn to his father “Ok - all done?”

He was less than pleased at the situation, and did everything in his power to let us know. He did a lot of screaming and jumping on the metal folding chairs - which, by the way, are the most comfortable chairs known to man, and I hope whoever invented those is extremely wealthy, for they are truly a miracle of science. I wanted to join him, for jumping on chairs looked like a great way to demonstrate my feelings. Sometimes, you know, there’s just no other way. (just ask Tom Cruise.)

My husband decided that everybody at the school should be fired. Clearly, this was an institution run by incompetent people. And, you know, he just might be right.