Fraying at the Seams

Everywhere I go, kids are starting to lose it.

At school, my students are barely coherent. I gave them a math test today that they'd had two weeks to study for; almost all of them failed it, except for the tiny handful who all got A+. I was forced to play the ogre with them and threaten to withhold all Friday Christmas festivities unless they all did brilliantly on the rewrite on Thursday. Even with this hanging over their heads, they were only briefly downcast. The "Riverdance" performance on my portable steps told a far cheerier tale. (I asked the kids to kick off all excess snow before entering the portable, and several of my boys shouted, "Riverdance!" and began doing a hideous parody of Irish stepdancing.)

At home, Spilly is as close to buggy as it's possible for a four-year-old to be. As I write this, she's dancing around her dad and shouting that he was once a nutcracker who wore orange pants, but that she broke the spell. She wants to know if we can get him some more orange pants. I've just said I'm sure we could find him a pair (Daddy is giving me a dark look). Oh, and now she is getting a banana to put on his head and is saying it's his crown. Earlier, she and I watched the beginning of "The Polar Express," which led to her leaping around pretending to be a pack of ecstatic children (or wolves or dingoes or whatever--it was hard to tell). My job was to pretend to be Tom Hanks giving everyone hot chocolate, shouting, "We got it!"

Repeat all together in a shaky voice: "How many more sleeps till the Big Day???"