Fifth Grade RULES

There is nothing better than being in 5^th grade. Nothing. Nada. Nichts.

First of all, unlike MY fifth grade when I was a kid, Sierra’s fifth grade is top of the elementary food chain. Fifth graders are the final class at the school, literally rising above all others.

Fifth graders get to roam the halls every hour because they change classrooms throughout the day. They have a home room, which is incredibly high school like and therefore really cool.

(Of course last year when we discussed this whole switching teacher thing, Sierra was mortified. More than one teacher? No! Too scary! Now she’s loving it. Turns out only little kids have one teacher. Who knew?)

Fifth graders get JOBS. Really cool jobs like the news team or being on the marshals, which entails working in the office and running school errands. Being a marshal is huge, like getting on the Supreme Court. Which makes me think the principal is channeling Tom Sawyer.

Then there are the Stars. Kids earn stars for three things: grades, behavior, and perfect attendance. Ah, the ever elusive “perfect attendance.”

It’s why Sierra never, ever wants to miss school. This is a marked change from last year’s weekly feigning-illness, clinging-to-door frame approach to school attendance. I thought it was just genetic in our family. Being a sickly child I never had perfect attendance, and Dad… well, let’s just say he considered a great deal of school to be optional.

Sure, I’m glad she’s shooting for the goal, but we have to be realistic around here. First of all there’s the swine flu.

The swine flu protocols at schools these days are such that if your child shows up at the nurses’ office with one of the four symptoms, like “a headache,” they hose them down with disinfectant, wrap them in plastic, sterilize their desks, and call you from a secure line to pick them up in a vacuum chamber.

Okay, it’s not that bad. Probably they skip the sterilization and just wipe down the desk.

And given that my daughters merely have to hear someone sneeze over the phone to become feverish, Sierra’s chances for perfect attendance are nil.

Add to that we foolishly planned a family trip during the school year for various complex reasons.

Little did I know, no one needs a break from fifth grade.

Nobody. Nadien. Niemand.

The Family Reunion Disaster

Our family reunion was exactly what I expected. Utter chaos surrounded by love, high pitch screams, too much food, and one disaster.

I imagine everyone who has been to a family reunion has a similar experience. Kids you haven’t seen in two years have shot up like NBA recruits. Several cousins have gone through different hairstyles. Small children find the best moments to completely embarrass their parents by doing what they do at home, like disrobing in public, despite all the bribes on the trip up. People who irritate each other over email, still irritate each other in person, but pretend not to be irritated until the last day.

Every night we all gathered around my grandmother – the one to blame for all of us, joked my uncle – and compared notes on our kids, our lives, and, of course, our mothers. Just like our kids will do in a few years.

It was going great, except for one little thing. My kids discovered I write this column.

Of course they’ve known about the column from the start, but somehow a little bell went off in their heads.

Surely this is not how Hannah Montana got started. Or, God forbid, Jessica Simpson.

Possibly it was because a few relatives asked if I was going to write about this or that during the trip, possibly because someone said “I read that in your mommy’s column,” but whatever the reason, the trap has been sprung and now my leg is good and caught.

For five days my daughters have looked up from every single activity and asked “are you going to write about this in your column?” At one point I thought it had faded away, then Mireya sunk a remarkable putt during putt putt and turned around and exclaimed, “Mommy! You can write about this in your column!”

Sierra suggested I include something about her whitewater rafting just as we were getting nailed by a bucket of ice cold water from the raft filled with “those boy cousins.”

Yikes. Sure, I’m used to my daughters mugging for the camera, but mugging for the keyboard?

Well, it looks like I’ll have to write about some other kids for a while until mine drop their guard and return to being their regular crazy selves. So if you see me taking notes in Landa Park, please, don’t call the sheriff.

That would be way too funny.