I Pledge Allegiance

I attended my first PTA meeting last night. (Okay, not my first, because Todd and i have attended a few for other schools we considered sending our kids to, but the first for a school my child will definitely attend.) The Lakeside High school Jazz band played at the beginning. They had very fancy, meticulously-styled bedhead hair. They all looked about 12 to me. After that, the student council president (a 5th grader, I guess?) led us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Everyone stood and put the hands over their heart and it was at once strange, and yet a little comforting. It reminded me of being a kid, and having a sense that the place I lived was the best in the world, an assurance that nothing was wrong with the place i was from. Except at 36 and kind of conflicted about the state of my country, I just felt self-conscious, and a little dirty, and a lot proud at the same time.

But then, while i tuned out the droning Peanuts voice of the PTA president (who really likes to hear herself go on and on), I said the words of the Pledge over again in my head, and i thought, "okay, that isn't so bad." I pretty much agree with all of that. But I still see where people who didn't believe in a Christian God would have a problem with it, or worry that they were having a particular God, or any God, forced on them at all.

Sigh. Things were a lot easier last time I was at a PTA meeting.

This is Ironic

So, I am almost 36 and I still feel like I am 26, maybe even 16 on a good day. I still think of myself and my friends, even the ones pushing 40, as "us kids" and the parents, teachers, etc. as "them." "The old people." "The man." Whatever.

When my friend Tara was made "Room Mother" for her son's class, I laughed. It was an evil laugh.

So, it is with much dismay that I find myself in the position of a pending nomination to a position on the board of the PTFuckingA at my son's preschool.

I am not kidding people. Anyone who knows me can vouch for this: This is the sign of the Apocalypse.