Who's Afraid of the PTA?

1. Our morning began with Henry eating a banana for breakfast at the kitchen table. This was his second attempt at eating something for breakfast. The bus was coming soon. We were rushing. Or, I was rushing him. He dropped a piece on the floor (no big deal), went to pick it up, then stepped in it -- no! -- then took a couple of steps --no!--oh no! I was able to gently persuade him to sit back down so I could clean mushed banana out of the extra deep lugs of his brand new sneakers during our last few minutes before we went out to wait for the school bus in the pouring rain.
2. Everyday now when he gets off the bus I treat his backpack like it's a live grenade. I gingerly unzip it and carefully examine the contents. Today I learned two things:
1. I signed him up for the "wrong" swimming class. The UB swimming class I chose is all the way down at the Main Street campus (inconvenient) on Saturday (really inconvenient). Today he got a flyer announcing the "right" UB swim class which meets at the local high school (huh, not at UB?) up the street from us on weeknights (super convenient). I think I will just sign him up for both classes since they only overlap for a few weeks. I was not happy. This was the same class that I mentioned where my dad had to bail me out because I forgot to sign the check. We are afflicted with some sort of spooky swimming curse!
2. I also learned that next week is Henry's week to be "highlighted." So he has to bring in the Kindergarten version of a PowerPoint presentation by Monday and the teacher who is currently my least favorite person in the world for a variety of reasons decided let us know about it TODAY. She knew this was coming all along, but thought that we only needed three days for what she describes as a "fun" project. I can tell you that it isn't fun to try and get my son to sign his own name so it is sure as hell not going to be "fun" to get him to write a paragraph about himself. It isn't that I would have spent any more time on it if she had sent it home Monday but I would have had time to mentally prepare myself for the amount of manipulation that it is going to take to get Henry to comply with this amount of "fun" work. I guess this is what people meant whent they kept talking about "high expectations in Kindergarten." And sadly this was a pretty good day for the backpack.
3. Tomorrow is the deadline for joining a PTA committee at his school. Whose afraid of the PTA? Me. I saw the Stepford Wives. At least three times, and assuming I am Katharine Ross, I don't think I'm going to show up and meet anyone even closely resembling the Paula Prentiss character. I have drafted many scenarios that would make it tolerable for me. I could pretend I am a character on the Morgan Spurlock documentary 30 Days, for example. I could pretend that it is a good place to meet other moms who like indie rock. I might just wear my Arcade Fire t-shirt and see if anyone notices. I just can't get the image of double knit polyester pants out of my head. I doubt the other mothers wear pants like that. I don't even know where one would buy pants like that but everytime I think about joining the PTA, I see artificial fibers and I stop dead in my tracks. Maybe I can wait until next year...

I caved and signed up for the yearbook committee, but I will cut and run if I detect the presence of Orlon, Dacron or any other double knit, manmade fiber ...