Next Week's Summer Activity For The Kiddies? Physics!

Summer vacation officially starts today. I've written before about my girls' aversion to organized summer activities - summer camps, drama classes, craft workshops and their ilk. Add to that my poor organizational skills and it makes for one long summer, endless days where the highlight may be the occasional journey to a warehouse store for crates of toilet paper or the exciting trip to the dry cleaners to pick up pants. This summer was no different - except for a few short weekend trips and some plans revolving around our out-of-town guests we had nothing planned. I was getting ready to clear out the shelves and polish up my Costco card for the exciting ten weeks ahead.

But somehow my conscience got the best of me, and I decided to take a friend's lead and sign the girls up for a class. The guilt was too much, and I couldn't get the image out of my head of the two of them as adults, sitting in a maximum security prison and Stone Phillips' voiceover saying, "Perhaps a pottery class could have kept these two out of trouble in that fateful summer of 2007."

My friend and I decided to sign our girls up for a songwriting class. Her two daughters are the sisters that Kira and Kiyomi have formed their band with, the band that so far has produced no music but has gone through two name changes, a dozen logo variations and three in-band fights. They're hoping to open for Green Day by the fall, so they've been thinking it might be a good idea to start acquiring some musical skills, now that they recently completed their most important task - designing all their touring outfits.

The course is being given through a popular arts center not far from here. My friend warned me that the classes are first-rate but the registration process could be a little hellish, what with every alpha mom within thirty miles fighting to get their kid into painting, baroque chanting or Peruvian cloth weaving. And when I arrived there last Saturday morning and saw the huge line snaking out of the registration office, I had the urge to bolt and just sign the girls up for that online bead-stringing class like I was planning to do in the first place.

I noticed everyone jockeying for position in front of a serious-looking woman with a clipboard who was judiciously handing out numbers to avoid anyone cutting in line. Why, it was as if that shrew had read my mind! Every couple of minutes a class number would be posted on an easel board indicating that it had just filled up, and a frantic murmur would run through the crowd. "129a's closed! That was Batik 101!" "285T! Someone just took the last spot in Advanced Tile for preschoolers!" This would be followed by gasps and anguished cries and then the sight of parents hurling themselves off the balcony as they realized that little Dakota's chance at being the next David Hockney had suddenly vaporized.

I looked down at my number: 135. I tried not to panic.

The woman behind me in line was fretting about not getting her three-year-old into his pottery class. It got me thinking how this whole scene was such a product of our current times, the whole über-parenting thing, the age of Baby Einstein and Baby Mozart and times-table flashcards for fetuses. Were we really ruining our kids chances for a bright future if they didn't get a jump on their fingerpainting now? I don't ever remember my parents standing in line for two hours to secure me a place in an art class, and I certainly didn't have any extra-curricular activities before I was five. I can't possibly imagine what you could teach a three-year-old in a pottery class, anyways, except for, "This is clay. Don't eat it."

But there was no chance in hell I was getting out of line, so I waited, and tried not to get too anxious as more classes filled up. My friend, who had gotten there two hours ahead of me finally made it up to the desk, got her two girls into the class and then reported back to me that it looked like there were still several spaces left. But there were 40 people in front of me in line, and for a few minutes I seriously considered passing out my stash of poisoned mints to prevent any of them from taking those coveted spots.

When I got to the front desk some 1-1/2 hours later and the woman informed me that I had gotten the last two spots in the class, I couldn't help but feel victorious. Who wouldn't, when they had single-handedly ensured their children's artistic future with just a sixty-dollar registration fee? I felt good, damnit, and thought there may be something to the whole über-parenting thing after all. And as I left, clutching my receipt for class #457T in my sweaty palms, I stopped to pick up a flyer for Banjo Camp, 2008. Julliard, here we come!

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tags: summer | slacker mom | übermom

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