The Kids Have Their Say and Their Song

This past Wednesday was the Pt. Roberts' primary school's annual Christmas Program.  There are about 15 of these K-3 kids this year and there was an almost full house to watch them perform.  They are all pretty good performers, although of different forms of entertainment.  There are the kids who are so intent on not making an error in front of everyone that they look like they might break into pieces from the intensity of their concentration.  And kids who can hardly believe they are on the stage while all the adults and older children are sitting down watching them.  Those kids are at all times looking all around them as if they had never contemplated the possibility, let alone the actuality, of being in such a situation.  There are kids who, except when they are actively performing, seem to be under the impression that they are in a locked room where nobody at all is looking at them...those are the little girls who appear to be considering pulling their dresses or sweaters over their heads in their spare time on stage.

There are kids who appear to be under the impression that their parents will not recognize them in such a strange setting and who, thus, are repeatedly trying to make contact with said parents: hand waving, grimace-grinning, etc.  There are kids who look like they figure that a public error is essentially unavoidable and who are thus trying to make themselves as small as possible.  And there are kids who step right up to the microphone, look right into their audiences' eyes, and send the message strongly, 'Yes, I'm here.  Just watch this!'

All those kids were at the performance, and all were more or less performing up a storm.  They read poems and quotations and said wise things of a Christmas and Conservationist nature.  They sang and performed a little play to lecture us on the fact that, with respect to conservation, We Are The Problem.  And they played Christmas songs on handbells with a fierceness of concentration that was exhausting, to them and even to us watching.  Waiting, waiting, waiting for that next note until an older girl was required to issue a poke to the laggard bell ringer.  A few of the bell ringers knew how to do the upstroke at the end of each ring, and watching that might have been the most fun of all.

I've been to the kids' Christmas programs for a number of years and they are always different.  There are no revivals on this Broadway.  This years' program wasn't really as stunning as last year's, when the kids all appeared in penguin costumes, but the handbell ringing was an experience not to be forgotten.  I can hardly wait until next year to see what they do!