The Show and Tell Hostage (aka "Call S.W.A.T.")

Didn’t you love Show and Tell when you were a kid? I did. It was an opportunity to vary the routine, to see something interesting, to show the other kids something I bet they’d never seen before (ha!), and especially to escape some horrid subject I was trying to avoid. I never stopped to consider the effects Show and Tell had on my mother. Now that I am a mom myself, I realize what an experience it is. My son’s preschool teachers came up with an ingenious (read: creatively treacherous) way to combine fun and learning, and sent out a memo that, henceforth, each week’s Show and Tell object should begin with the Letter of the Week. Great. Not only do I have to be able to find something in this house, but now I have to coordinate it, too.

Well, moms and dads, you and I both know that the instant you are confined to the Letter of the Week, every brain cell devoted to that letter dies. If the Letter of the Week is D, for instance, I promise you that you will neither find nor recognize a single dinosaur, dragon, Dumbledore, dog, or duck anywhere in your house. You don’t know the meaning of real panic until you’ve stood there in the middle of a toy explosion in your child’s room, panting and staring wildly around you, with the only D-words you can think of being dynamite, drywall, and D-cup, none of which should ever make an appearance during Show and Tell.

I blew Week A simply because I didn’t realize the restriction about the Letter of the Week. The school year had just started and I was on information overload. I’d missed this particular little detail and brought my son’s toy binoculars for Week A. RATS! I felt sorry for him as he dragged into the classroom, head down, clearly ashamed of his loser mother. The teachers had told us in Orientation how sad it was when a kid didn’t have anything for Show and Tell when everyone else did. This was meant to engage us into being willing partners with our children, but all it did was let us know just what a boatload of guilt we were in for if we ever let the little darlings down. The teacher who met me at the door set me straight and then said that if my son didn’t have an “A” object, he could simply say an “A” word to show his classmates (ain‘t preschool great? Wish real life was like that. “No, Mr. Chairman, I do not have the figures for that presentation but I can say them: Z-E-R-O.”). So here I was in the hallway, hunched over my son during his first week of class in a new school, his first day of Show and Tell, knowing no one and watching his new classmates walk by with their backpacks stuffed to the gills with “A“ objects, and I was hissing the word “astronaut” into his ear and trying to get him to repeat it after me. He just did his best to pretend he didn’t know this crazy lady. So I blew it right off the bat. But, I thought grimly, heading down the Walk of Shame back to the parking lot, now that I know, I’ll be prepared. The binoculars will work for next week.

Scientific question: how long does it take one four-year old to lose a pair of toy binoculars?
Answer: The time required to lose an object is inversely proportionate to the importance of that object, and directly proportionate to the amount of time that is required to find it.

So I stuffed Buzz Lightyear in my son’s backpack, along with two badges he got from Lowes for attending their kiddie workshop. Buzz is a pretty cool toy and I briefly wondered about the wisdom of letting him loose in a preschool room that ran high to boys. I needn’t have worried, because my son completely forgot the toy AND the badges were in his backpack! Nice. There goes Week B.

After I’d been sidelined by Weeks A and B, I decided to be more proactive and get prepared for Week C. Days before Show and Tell was scheduled, I sat down with a pencil, a piece of paper, and a dictionary. With focus worthy of brain surgery, I went through the C’s and diligently wrote down every single C word that seemed preschool-ish. That’s half the battle, you know. Thinking of the dumb words in the first place. (As an interesting side note, I discovered an astounding wealth of words relating to sex that start with the letter C. Hmmm. Interesting.) Well, this method worked. My son happens to have a kid’s set of musical instruments, one of which was a pair of cymbals. Cymbals! What a great C word! They are small. They are obvious. They’re sort of educational, in a musical kind of way. AND they don’t have anything to do with sex. Yes! We had a winner. I swaggered into preschool with the self-confident, arrogant air of one who has beaten the system. MY son was prepared. WE found a great Show and Tell object. WE are hot snot.

Do you know how long, on average, a preschool teacher lets a kid present his Show and Tell item? Approximately 11 seconds, that’s how long. Next!

So in order to keep my status as a rule-following parent, a parent who cares enough that she’ll call out the bloodhounds to help her track down the only age-appropriate item in her house that starts with the letter G (not that bloodhounds can read, but you get the idea), I have to go through this farce every single week, barring Thanksgiving and Christmas, until the alphabet is exhausted. What in the name of all that is holy will I do for the letter Q? X and Z? Just how many zebras are going to show up during Z week, anyway? I realized, with a sinking feeling, that I was now a hostage to the system. It had sucked me in and swallowed me whole. There would be no negotiating out of this. Call SWAT.

My son’s teachers are obviously relieved that I have gotten with the program. My son acknowledges me now when I pick him up on Show and Tell days. Now I just have to keep it up. Where’s my dictionary….?