Tonight I attended the Montessori School Spaghetti Dinner, a gala fundraising event that the children call a “sketti dinner” or alternatively a “spasgetti dinner.” We drank powdered lemonade out of paper cups and managed to maintain adult conversation over the din of students pretending to be either monsters or vulnerable peasants being attacked my monsters. Montessori has the world’s prettiest, most tattooed teachers, but they were tired from a day of molding young minds and cooking noodles. They were probably a little disappointed that no parents thought to bring a keg of beer to hide in the playground. I had a great time because I’m crazy about 1) dessert buffets, and 2) small children that other people have raised to be adorable. I heard one little girl on the jungle gym say, “I’m so shwetty from all this running.” After dinner it got dark outside fast and the kids sprinted back and forth like echo-locating bats while Darren and I stumbled around trying not to crash into playground equipment or cute outfits emerging from the night. It was like a scene from Children of the Corn but instead of a cornfield there were swingsets, sandboxes, and parents trying not to drop their cupcakes on the ground. Lastly, there were two canaries living in the dining hall and one little boy tucked himself under the blanket spread over their cage in order to stress them out to within an inch of their lives. I saw the back of his short legs and a convulsing blanket where his head should have been and I knew I had to do something. I caught the boy right before he tipped the cage sideways in order to grab a canary tail through the bars in his marinara-stained fingers. By saving the canaries, I felt like I did my good deed for the night. However our attempt at singing the birds to sleep was foiled because the little boy kept sneezing into the cage.
Excellent dinner, Montessori! May your children go easy on you Monday morning.