I hate the first week of school.
OK, so I work at a Gymplex and I didn’t even THINK about how the Olympics would affect enrollment….let me tell you, every kid and their parents are thinking they’re the next Paul Hamm. So enrollment is HUGE this year, and the folks are also thinking: Why not dance? Let’s throw dance in there too! So I’m getting all these kids and I’m struggling but hanging in there and today I got: THE SISTERS. Yeah, three sisters, each a year apart (So, three kids under the age of FOUR). I cannot stress what a bad idea it is to put three sisters into the same dance class–two is usually too many. First of all, they have an entire political structure set up within the three of them: Oldest is the residing dictator, youngest is the demure pion, and the MIDDLE ONE IS CRAZY. Read: Anarchy. So, here I am trying to teach the other five children and the three sisters are freaking out all over the place. Let’s call them Sue, Lou, and Poo. Sue is the oldest, and she wants to do all the talking for all the other two. I don’t allow it, until I realize considering how incoherant the other two are, it’s not a bad idea. The middle one’s full name is Louella but if you call her that she’ll scream and cry. Appearantly she’s very offended by her full name. Lou is also sensitive to ribbons (ie the ones on her shoes), elastic (same), and focusing on one thing past a certain point. NO ATTENTION SPAN what so ever. Geezus Christ. So that leaves me with this hideous, whining, wailing, child who I had to order out of the room TWICE for throwing a full-on tantrum. Now, Poo, the youngest is surprisingly coherant (although “she doesn’t talk much” according to the mother) and even though I don’t allow 2 yr olds in the class, she slipped by. She did fairly well, but her sisters still insisted on picking her up and throwing her around the room occasionally. What the crap? “Put her down!” I must have yelled three or four times. “I’m sure she’s very capable of walking.”
Meanwhile, the other kids are getting impatient and bored with The Three Sisters. There’s nothing funnier than watching a four year old get pissed at her peers. I can practically see the sigh of disgust escaping the lips of the other five girls. It was a mess…and I had to use my Mean Dance Teacher voice, and I hate that. (It’s usually combined with a severe clapping of the hands, which startles them with its force: CLAP! This is a technique I first starting using with my cat, who knew it worked with children?).
So now I’m thinking: Where’s my bourbon? Where’s my sanity? I think I lost it somewhere at the beginning of the week.