There was a purple paper sack taped to B�s cubby at the pre-school today. In my mind, I cried out �Noooooooooooo!� and I couldn�t help but feel a bit like Long John Silver in Treasure Island, upon receiving the Black Spot. Dread filled my heart.
Last week and this week, each day has been assigned a different color. The kids are supposed to wear the color of the day, and one parent is �volunteered� to provide props, in the specified color scheme, for all of the kids. Twenty of �em.
Every day I pick B up, I go to her cubby to get her things, and I see a paper bag in the color of the next day�s theme, taped to a child�s cubby, to let his/her parent(s) know that they are expected to provide the treats for the group the next day. Every day I see the bag, and I say to myself, �Glad it�s not me!�
But today it was me. There it was, hanging there, in such a lovely shade of purple. There wasn�t even a note attached to it, like all the others. No, it wasn�t necessary. I knew exactly what it meant. It was my turned to provide something, anything purple, times twenty.
You might think it�s easy to find little purple edible and nonedible things for a group of 3 year olds. You would be wrong. First of all, I think two days notice would be nice. This one-day notice stuff is crap. But I digress.
I had, of course, already been grocery shopping, so back to the store was exactly where I did not want to go. But obviously I had to, else I�d be running out again this evening, which I definitely did not want to do.
There�s a Rite Aid on my way home, and I figured if they didn�t have any little purple junk, who would, right? So I drag B into the store, and we�re no sooner there than she�s announcing, �Mama, I have to go potty!� Great. Because then I had to go to. The power of suggestion. So we both have to pee, while desperately roaming the aisles looking for anything purple, cheap, in great quanty, that a three year old wouldn�t poke his eye out with, choke on, or be poisoned by.
Yadda yadda yadda (didn�t you just love Seinfeld?), I came home with: four sheets of stickers, each containing 5 purple Barney�s, which I had to cut out to make sure each child got one; 5 packs of little paint brushes, each pack containing 16 paint brushes, 4 of which were purple (got �em in the dollar bin, and what I am going to do with the 60 leftover paint brushes I. Do. Not. Know.); and one gigantic bag of Halloween candy, which contains about 25 pounds of various candies like Baby Ruth�s, Nestle�s Crunch Bars, Butterfingers, and giant purple Sweet Tarts. I had to get this gigantic bag because it was the only one they had in which I could be sure there would be at least twenty of the purple ones.
So each kid gets a Barney sticker, a little purple paint brush, and a giant purple Sweet Tart. Ain�t that grand? We managed to make it home without wetting ourselves, but just barely. P took one look at the giant bag of candy and almost went into a diabetic coma. There�s a serious amount of candy in our house right now. It is ridiculous.
All that $$ and effort for stuff most of the kids� parents will throw away immediately (like I have been doing) because it�s junk they won�t want littering their house. But the kids will be learning a valuable lesson in �purple.�
And I�m relieved to know the Black Spot will be visited upon someone else next time. My duty is done.
3 Comment(s)
