Week Thirty-Six: May 10th

I wish I had a pencil-thin mustache....

Well, not anymore. Aside from my overwhelming desire to cheese-it-up over these last few weeks (of blog and school) there was actually a good cause for this lip caterpillar. On Tuesday I had to perform in a concert alongside our 4th/5th grade Orchestra (Strings) players. Their teacher hatched this plot early in the year, and approached me during the second week of school to see if I would be interested. Would I? She admitted, which later became clear to all, that she did not know me that well.

For this concert, we were to be the concluding act in their lengthy recital of the early-instrument-mastering classics "Go Tell Aunt Rhody," Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," and many, many more. Nothing out of the ordinary there. As a grand-finale, a few staff members were to take on parts in a play called "Aunt Rhody's Appetite" as the kids played accompaniment. There was a narrator (our principal, who really didn't want to be in it at all), Aunt Rhody (another 4th grade teacher), the Old Gray Goose (our assistant principal, who feared making a fool of himself) and Pierre, the French Chef (me.) So, this 'stache was a method 'stache.

A funny thing happened on the way to the finale: the other 4th grade teacher got sick and we were left in a bind. The Strings teacher who by then had decided this kind of thing was "clearly within (my) realm of ability," acquiesced when I suggested that I rehearse on the final day as both Pierre and Aunt Rhody. She thought I was crazy at the time, but allowed me to do it. About halfway through the first rehearsal, she decided I should do both (prompting our assistant principal to say I should do all four!)

That is how, in our afternoon assembly before our 2nd-5th graders and that evening, before all the parents and families, I came to be dressed as half of a French Chef and half of an old woman, as I spoke, mostly to myself, and did any other manner of ridiculous things I never get to do at school. I don't agree with many of the parents who told me "I missed my calling," which I am not sure is an indictment of my teaching or a testament to the quality of acting they have seen.

At the least, I could not take myself at all serious (and rarely do anyway) as I glanced in any mirror throughout the week and saw this terrible 'stache grinning back at me.