Silas, Crickets, and Grandparents Day

Our school has a Grandparents Day celebration each year.  It's a day when cute little silver haired people practically get run down in the parking lot by Mom's in sweatpants, holding coffee mugs and driving monstrous SUV's who are trying to get their kid dropped at the curb before the last bell rings.  The sweet little silver haired Grandparents never use the crosswalk.  They are just slowly and randomly moving through the parking lot creating quite the obstacle course for the frazzled moms during morning carpool.   If no Grandparents are available for the students, they may invite a "special person" to attend the festivities.  I was that "special person" this year, and since Silas basically has to go wherever I go when he's not in Pre-K, he had to come along.

Greyson had a chair next to his desk for me, and Silas had to stand.  There was hardly any room to move with all the students and their Grandparents.  We were packed like sardines in the middle of the classroom. Our first activity was to interview each other.  About three questions in, I heard something hit the floor and  the little girl behind us yell, "Oh no!"  I turned to see that Silas has knocked over her cricket habitat and there were leaves, sticks, and  hopping crickets all over the floor.  The girl's Grandma had bent over to try and catch one and at that exact moment I backed my chair into her head.  She yelled, "Ouch!" and was rubbing her head with one hand while trying to catch a cricket with another.  I am leaning precariously over my chair trying to retrieve grass, leaves, and the container while apologizing to the poor Grandma with the headache.  Greyson yelled, "HE'S ON YOUR SHOE!!"  I had to freeze in my rather odd position in the chair so Greyson could get it off my shoe, when I looked up into another Grandma's face.  She was looking down at me with her hand over her mouth and laughing hysterically with tears in her eyes.   The Grandma with the throbbing head was trying to scoop up a cricket using the container and the lid and pinched its leg off in the process. We finally got all the crickets off the floor and back into the habitat while Silas is standing in the midst of all the chaos crying, shaking his head and saying, "I'm sorry!  I'm sorry!"  Yes it's true.  We cause a scene most every place we go.  We can't just do things unnoticed.  Calamity usually follows,  and we either entertain or annoy the people around us.  Believe you me, those Grandparents will not soon forget this  Grandparents Day at Firm Foundation Christian School.

After we finished our interview, cupcakes, and self-portraits, Silas and I helped clean up our mess, hugged Greyson good-bye, apologized AGAIN to the Grandma with the goose egg on her head, and left for home.   It was a very quiet drive all the way to the house, and after I pulled into the garage and went to swing my leg out of the car,  lo and behold, there was a cricket on my knee!!  That poor little thing was so desperate for freedom that he caught a hold of the mother of the boy who set him free.  Little did that cricket know that with an insect project in the works for Greyson, I must not let him go.  I sat there wondering how I could capture him when I noticed a baggie on the passenger seat with a grasshopper in it that Greyson had caught the previous day at school.   Yes, only I would have a baggie with a bug in it on my front seat.  Now that poor little cricket who was yearning to be free will soon be pinned to a poster board with about 19 other insects.