I am not a school spirit kind of mom. In fact if you continue as a fan of mine you will soon find out that I have a great dislike for the school system as a whole. I am not even a kid person. I like my own children now that I have them. But I usually draw the line at getting involved with other people's kids. I just don't have the patience (or the interest) to deal with small children. That being said, I was tricked into participating in my six year old son's Parent Teacher Club at his new school. They call it a PTC meeting. My husband is to blame for this trickery. He got a voicemail from the school about the upcoming PTC meeting and assumed that it was a Parent Teacher Conference meeting. Notice the similarity of the capitalized letters. Obviously, they are the same, so my dear hubby told me the date and time of our Parent Teacher Conference and that was that. We showed up along with a bunch of other parents and I thought,"Wow, I guess this school does their conferences in groups." About 30 seconds into the "meeting" I figured out why we were really there. I glared at my husband. "This is a booster club meeting!" He put on a sheepish grin as if to say he was sorry, and I braced myself to be bored for the next hour and a half.

Of course, the entrepreneur in me started to get interested in the event planning they were discussing, and all of a sudden I was raising my hand to contribute! I couldn't believe myself. I told myself to put my hand down, or they would trap me and expect me to keep "volunteering". Alas, against my better judgement, near the end of the meeting, I did just that. I volunteered to take pictures of the kids and thier grandparents at an upcoming event. Ugh! Why, why, why did I do that? Well, for one they needed help. Two, my own business is so slow at the moment that I really am bored during the day and do have time to help. Three, I knew that my kid would be so excited to have mommy at school, making him look good. Hiding behind a camera during the event was the least painful way I could think of to physically participate, without too much interaction. Oh what joy. I will have to write more about this once the event is over.

I reluctantly went to the next meeting, knowing that now people were counting on my fabulous input and ideas. Lo and behold, I got myself in even deeper than before. I came up with the wonderful idea of procuring items from local businesses to subsidize some of the costs associated with running the next event on the schedule. THEN, I volunteered to make phone calls and do the work myself! Good Lord! What is wrong with me? I swear this whole thing was a setup from the very beginning. My husband must have figured I needed help spending my new free time and offered me up as a slave to the school people. If they only knew my secret distaste for the school system, I'm sure I would be outsted. But no, I really do want to preserve my young child's sense of self-esteem, and maybe help my community in the process. So I will squelch my opinions of the educational system, and be a great school mom. Heck, If I'm lucky maybe I'll be brainwashed into enjoying myself while I do it.