Crushing My Spirit Week

On Sunday evening, the school sent an email to the parents:

“Hello everyone,

Only 5 days until spring break! Our leadership teams in our school have suggested we have a spirit/theme week the last week of school before the break and have come up with the following themes beginning tomorrow;

Monday……….Wacky Hair Day
Tuesday……….Favourite Character Day
Wednesday…..Jersey Day
Thursday……..Formal Day
Friday…………Tie Day

Thank you & enjoy the week!”

No. THANK YOU.

Thank you for making me want to stab you from the other side of the computer screen with a hardened Sharpie Marker. Thank you for adding another ring of Hell to my morning child-prep routine. Are you high? What the hell is wrong with you, School?

Oh. I get it. It’s an easy way to burn up a whole week of classroom time! As a child, I remember loving the wild and crazy “no uniform day” we’d have at our Catholic school about once a year. It was so out there, and so off-the-wall to see your classmates in THEIR HOME CLOTHES instead of the itchy navy blue jumper/cords-sweater- white blouse. Jeans! T-shirts! Holy crap!I know, right? Wicked fun. They spoiled us in the 80’s.

Back to 2013. Because I am such a *good mother* and member of the school Parent Advisory Group, I indulge my children with participation in “Spirit Week” (which I refer to as “Breaking My Spirit Week”) so that they don’t run off to tell their future therapist that their mother was THAT MOTHER : the one who sent them to school in their regular clothes on themed days. No. Peer judgement by the other Mommy Olympians/Resident Afghan Hounds is too steep.

I wish my children had more developed senses of humour, because we could have fun with interpreting the themes. I see “Jersey Day” on that list, and instead of sending them in obligatory Winnipeg Jets Jerseys, (which we don’t own, because I have no fucks to give about the NHL) I would dress one as Snooki and one as Bon Jovi.

I am awesome like that.

Sadly, my kids don’t appreciate my irreverent brand of schtick, so I’m forced to settle for wobbling outside the box within limitations.
Yesterday I spent an hour making them “Crazy Hair.”

…by which I mean, that I gave them meticulously crafted braids with Dollar Store birds interspersed. Think “Frida Kalho, sponsored by Dollar Tree, stars in ‘The Birds.’

Today?

“FAVOURITE CHARACTER DAY”. I died inside when the kids insisted that they NEEDED to participate. I was seriously hoping that we could bench warm on this one.

Of course not.

I am not a geek-dork. Nor a fetishist.
I don’t have a trunk full of book/movie character costumes on hand.

Conversation goes like this:

Kid 1: I WANT TO BE PRINCESS LEIA.

Me: {Gets a white cardigan, hubby’s white t-shirt, white fugly scarf for a belt and makes buns on sides of her head.} Done!