If You Have to Use the Words "If It's Any Consolation," It's Probably Not

Life just gets busier and busier--can I get an amen?? I have a to-do list a mile long (seriously, you wanna measure it??!) and lately, out of necessity, blogging has had to be Priority #412 which means, of course, that one day turns into the next and before I realize it, I haven't blogged in I-couldn't-tell-you-how-long.

As my faithful readers know (and by faithful I mean the three or so people who still actually cruise over to this site to see if I have anything new to say), I like to tell stories. I'm not known for my brevity and I think the story is all in the details; so the propensity of mine for not being able to pass along information without giving you every inch of the back story also inhibits me from posting on a regular basis--because relating all those details requires me to sit in my rocking chair for an inordinate amount of time, thinking of just the right word or words to make my stories as interesting as possible. (I know you're thinking, "Seriously? You spend hours on your blog entries? Hmmph, you couldn't tell it by me!")

Anyway, I have a story to tell that is more for myself than for anyone else; in twenty years I will have forgotten that any of this happened and that thought makes me sad, so I am preserving it here for all time (or until the Internet explodes in a fiery ball of gas, at which point it probably won't matter too much).

At the risk of sounding like I'm boasting for boasting's sake, you may recall that about a month ago (longer?) both of my girls won the school Math Olympics for their grade level and in their category--in their cases, 3rd and 5th grade Computation. A few weeks later all of the school winners competed in the District competition and Darcy went on to win that category as well, which means she is heading to Area in March. The reason I bring all that back up is because there was a special time set aside in Chapel one morning when all the winners received ribbons, which means that both Darcy AND Peyton were honored.

(Side note: When Darcy handed me her ribbon it said, "1st Place Art Festival," and I found myself in a real conundrum: Do I point out the error to the teacher? Do I keep my mouth shut and be thankful that she got a ribbon at all? I elected to go with Door #2 but it just so happened that the teacher who handed out the ribbons (and administered the tests) walked out at the same time as us, so you know I couldn't resist pointing out the mistake. As it turned out, the teacher had seen the error on the ribbon and said that corrected ribbons had already been ordered but the thing is, as I told her, in a few years when who knows how many of my brain cells are dead, I will have forgotten that Darcy ever won the Math Olympics; consequently, if she wasn't given a corrected ribbon I would actually believe Darcy won first place in an Art Festival!!)

But I digress. Trust me when I tell you that there is a whole boatload of details about the Speech Meet itself that I am sparing you from. I spent in excess of five hours (with Sawyer) at school waiting to hear two speeches that lasted all of five minutes, if that. On the bright side, I did make a new friend and that's always nice; in fact, the time went much quicker because she has children in 3rd and 5th grade and they both happen to be in the same individual classes as Darcy and Peyton, so we got to know each other quite well over the course of five hours!

Poor Peyton. She was the first person in her class to have memorized her poem and she has known it since Christmas break; but no matter how I tried to persuade her to speak up loudly and animatedly, she couldn't project that little voice of hers so even though on the day of her speech she nailed her poem, her performance was not what I would call "ribbon-worthy." (Don't worry, I didn't tell her that.)

Darcy, on the other hand, was nervous but confident and indeed, the 5th graders as a whole were much more polished than the 3rd graders (which I suppose is as it should be). And when all the 5th graders in her class had finished reciting their passages and the rest of the class had been dismissed, Darcy and another boy were held back and told that they had to compete in a run-off due to a tie score. Now this is our first experience with the Speech Meet so I didn't know what criteria the judges were basing their scores on, but at that point I had a pretty good feeling that Darcy was looking at a ribbon of some kind because the kid she was tied with had done an excellent job on his selection as well. Not surprisingly, they were both MORE nervous the second time around, but they got through it and I thought they were both winners!

One more detail I need to insert: Peyton's speech was given on Monday and Darcy's on Wednesday, which is Chapel Day. So Sawyer and I attended Chapel on Wednesday since Darcy was due to deliver her speech at its conclusion. Meanwhile, Peyton's teacher and I had been e-mailing back and forth for a couple of days about details regarding an upcoming field trip that I'm participating in. It's important to note that. So when I got to Chapel, Peyton's teacher saw me and came over to greet me. "Did you get my e-mail?" she asked in a whisper. "Not this morning, no," I answered. She then leaned over and said, rather conspiratorially, "Well, you need to be here for a special assembly on Friday morning." "Oh, okay," I said, somewhat puzzled. And then, while the words were still hanging there in the air I saw this look come over her face as though she had said something she shouldn't have and then she sort of sputtered, "Um, you know what? That's not right. No, never mind. I was thinking about another e-mail. Never mind. We'll see you on Monday morning. I just got confused."

Peyton's teacher was clearly flustered and while I did not want to draw attention to the fact that she had obviously spoken out of turn, I did come away wondering, "What in the world is going on Friday and why am I not invited??!" (At this point I didn't realize Speech Meet ribbons would be awarded on Friday.) Well, it didn't take long to put two and two together. The next day (yesterday, in fact), Darcy's teacher sent out an e-mail stating that she hoped parents could come to the Speech Meet Awards on Friday at 9:00 a.m. She went on to ask that we reply to her e-mail by 2:00 p.m. and that if she hadn't heard from anyone, they would receive a phone call. It was then that it occurred to me that Darcy was probably receiving a ribbon, and the e-mail was only being sent to the winning students' parents. Oh yeah, I'm quick. So naturally I replayed the conversation with Mrs. Jones in my head and I concluded that Peyton was absolutely NOT in the running for a ribbon, based on her teacher's awkward behavior.

Friday morning: Speech Meet Awards. The girls and I discussed the whole matter while they got ready for school and as it turns out, it was evidently supposed to be a surprise to the winning students when their names were called, but Peyton said that her teacher had told her class that anyone who was receiving a ribbon should have received a phone call. Ta-da! Confirmation. Peyton was 100% certain that she was not a winner, and she was OKAY with that. Darcy, on the other hand, was on pins and needles because she was 100% certain that she WAS a prize-winner, and all that was left was to see which color she would receive.

I got to the assembly and took my seat, and not long afterwards both Peyton and Darcy joined me. I talked to Peyton again and confirmed that she would be okay if her name was not called and she assured me she knew she wasn't a winner. And then the ribbons started waving.

Turns out the Speech Meet is sort of a big deal, and a lot of kids get ribbons. There is a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place ribbon awarded per category per class, which means in the 3rd grade there were roughly 18 ribbons handed out-three for scripture memory and three for poetry times three classes. So while only six children in Peyton's class received a ribbon, the visual image of that many third graders standing on the stage with big smiles on their faces was more than Peyton was prepared to deal with. I looked over at her after all the winners had been announced and saw, to my horror, that pools of tears had formed in her eyes. Ouch. I reminded her that she was one of only a handful of Math Olympics winners who took home a ribbon; you can imagine how unenthusiastic her response to my reminder was.

Her sadness somewhat tempered my reaction a few minutes later when Darcy and the boy who had competed in the run-off were awarded CO-FIRST PLACE for scripture memory. YAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!!!!! I mean, yay Darcy. :-)

As it turns out, the run-off was to determine which 1st place winner will go on to compete at District; evidently ACSI rules state that only one person can advance in a category. And the principal, who was awarding all the ribbons, didn't even have that information so she told all the co-1st place winners (there were several) to check with their teachers to find out who'd been given "the edge." The funniest part was watching Darcy's eyes when Mrs. Smith made the announcement that the first place winners would be going on to District. They got as big as saucers and I knew exactly what she was thinking: "I might have to do this again??!" So when I pick her up from school this afternoon, I may find that she has, in my brother's words, "graciously conceded" her spot to Jonathan if indeed she was awarded more points than him!