You know that I don’t like to make anyone feel unnecessarily guilty and I am sure you are very busy, but I just felt the need to point out that you recently let a rather important day pass by without mention.  It may not have been an international holiday and it probably was not printed on your wall calendar (if you remain defiantly old school like me about these things and actually have a calendar hanging on your wall).  It was, nonetheless, a very important day and you missed it.  If you happen to be a close family member or a very good friend of mine, please commence hanging your head in shame.

It was Y Presentation Day.

That’s right, the letter Y.  This was Grayson’s very first school presentation – the first ever in his whole school career – and he had to present the letter Y in front of his entire class and Y, as you know, is really the most challenging letter in the whole alphabet, despite what the parents of letter Q and X are saying.

And you didn’t so much as send us an e-card.

Before I tell you about Y Presentation Day, I want you to know that I believe whole-heartedly in raising independent children who can think for themselves and trust in their own abilities.  I really do.  I should probably also tell you that I did very well in school because, right from the start, I was that kid – you know the one – who loved assignments so much that I used to make them up for myself in middle school because there wasn’t enough work to keep me happy.  Other kids made nasty comments about the colour of my nose, but I couldn’t help it because I loved school.  I stopped making up assignments by high school, about the time my boobs grew and I got contact lenses, which is the stuff of an entirely different story.

When we returned from Christmas holidays, Grayson’s deadline of January 26^th began to loom so preparations started two weeks earlier.  I came downstairs one Saturday morning to find Geoff and Grayson at the kitchen table.  Grayson was still in his pajamas, carefully drawing out a storyboard for a movie he wanted to make about the letter Y.  It was full of little stick figures doing various Y things like eating yogurt and saying “yucky”.

And my little schoolgirl’s heart skipped a beat.

We began shooting the film the next day, spending a couple of happy hours following the kids around the house with the camera.  Grayson hammed it up with a fake microphone, introducing each segment of the storyboard with his best presenter’s voice and ad-libbing with terrific lines like, “this can be super-good!”  He pulled yogurt out of the fridge, he yodelled with his Dad, he danced in a yellow coat with his little brother, and he sat on a mat with me to do some yoga.  It was fun.

But we weren’t done.

That week, I spent three more hours editing the film, and only half of that with Grayson on my lap helping to make creative decisions before he grew too bored and went to build some Lego.  Geoff had to force me off the computer.  Then, midweek, I went shopping for the Y things that Grayson would show to his classmates before the movie because he needed to do something in the way of an introduction, right?  I spent an hour hunting the aisles of Target and I was stopped twice to see if I needed help finding something.  I just shook my head because the only answer I could think of was, “I’m looking for the letter Y” and, what with the fluorescent lighting making my head hurt, I was beginning to feel like one of the less well-balanced puppets on a bad episode of Sesame Street so I just kept hunting until I found some organic yogurt-tubes and a yellow bowl to put them in.  Then I picked up some York peppermint chocolates to hand out (though I am aware that children in general don’t like peppermint) and made myself leave the toy aisle after my fourth trip though without finding a damn yo-yo.

I should probably mention that throughout this entire time I had been fighting off a slightly milder version of the Black Death of 1603 (And, again, I’d like to thank my family and friends for all the flowers.)

We still, however, weren’t done.

The night before the presentation, we sat down so that Grayson could write out a few of the Y words he had thought up that we hadn’t managed to fit into his movie and then we practised his introduction.  Grayson, however, was tired and I felt my blood-pressure rising because he wouldn’t take our practice session seriously.  He kept trying to do the whole thing with a fake speech impediment and pop-out eyes and falling apart in giggles while I twisted myself into knots trying to look calm and amused by his five-year-old sense of humour while my inner voice was screeching “you need to practise your lines!”  At this point, I made a mental note about my need for counselling.

The day of the presentation finally arrived.  Geoff took an hour from work to be there and we had Willan with us so the three of us sat in the background to watch Grayson stand shyly in front of his classmates, stumbling through a few lines – made up on the spot of course – about the letter Y.  When it was time for his teacher to put the movie on, neither the memory stick nor the backup DVD worked on her antiquated computer system so we showed it on Geoff’s laptop which we had fortunately thought to bring with us (you know, as a THIRD backup).  The kids crowded around to watch the three minute movie, most of them laughing in all the right places and clapping politely when it was over.  I forced myself not to notice which kids didn’t laugh and I had to firmly remind myself that I was not allowed to grab the big kid who didn’t clap and slam his sticky little hands together.  Then Grayson got to hand out the yogurt tubes and the chocolates, clearly enjoying the power as he bestowed these gifts upon his classmates, and then it was over.

We high-fived our son and left the classroom.

There was a long and thoughtful silence in the car as we drove Geoff back to work.  Before he opened the car door, he turned to me.
“I wish the memory card had worked,” he said.

“Or the DVD,” I answered.

“We should have set it up ahead of time,” said Geoff.

(silence)

“You know, it’s just kindergarten…” he said.

“Yup,” I said.

And then I went home to start the notes for my new book entitled, “An Expert’s Guide to Over-parenting”.

(Grayson, when you’re big enough to read this, you officially have my permission to hide any and all assignments from me until after they’re done, especially the science ones).