Primary Program Practice

So, 98% of my readers know that I am a member of a church with lay clergy. That means members like me are asked to do jobs to keep things running. In some geographical locations, members like me are vital to keep things running. In others, we get show jobs ("callings" would be the official terminology) so that we don't feel left out because we aren't really needed.

Let me first state that I do not in any way wish to complain about my current calling. It is a very important calling and I feel like I was very much needed in this position, unlike my first calling here in my new home, in which I was the "ladies' email forwarder." It had a better official name, but all I did was receive a message for the ladies each month that had been written, rewritten, and submitted to a higher up for approval by someone else, and then hit the forward button on the computer. Useless. Wasn't sorry to see that one go.

In my current calling, I teach a class of four and five year old boys. Including my son. Their last teachers included an older woman whose children were grown and a younger woman with no children, and these dear women didn't realize that ordinary four and five year old boys don't actually sit through Sunday school. Of course, what I didn't realize is that these are no ordinary boys. One of the original four has zero attention span and a psychologist-diagnosed stubborn streak the size of the church building; the next has an attention span of about 30 seconds, after which he moves into his own world full of song and dance and upside-down chairs; my son is slightly better with what I believe might be an average attention span (38 seconds); and the fourth, the perfect little angel boy with the wide blue eyes, moved to Alaska last month.

We leftovers were over at the church yesterday morning practicing for the Primary program -- the one Sunday per year where all the children (about 30-40 of them?) get to show off for the main meeting, singing songs and giving short talks.

For future reference in this post, the Primary Presidency consists of the three ladies who organize the program, find suckers teachers like me, and keep things running Sundays.

Our Primary Presidency had wisely seated me up on the stand with Mr. Zero Attention Span directly on my left, whom we shall call "McKay", and Mr Own World on my right, whom we shall call "Kimball". "Jonathan" was seated on McKay's right, two chairs away from me. We all began the practice with high hopes.

The following were against me.

First, the chairs on the stand are theater type chairs that bounce up when you get off of them. Kimball and McKay immediately began bouncing on their chairs, while Jonathan, in a regular chair set up next to them, looked on longingly. I found I could put one arm on Kimball's chair, and one arm on McKays, and the bouncing was not quite as loud.

Two, we were seated right in front of the sacrament table, which has its own pull-out microphone hidden in a clever little drawer. It took McKay about five minutes to discover the pull-out microphone.

"What is this?" he asked loudly.

I hissed at him (patiently, as all good teachers do), and put the microphone back, and forbade him from opening it again. So Kimball opened it. And McKay four more times. And Jonathan almost once. But Jonathan has learned to fear my hissings.

I threatened and hissed and shushed and tried my positive feedback. ("Kimball, thank you for listening so quietly during those last 30 seconds. It really shows respect to the teachers and the children speaking.") But it was a total disaster.

Jonathan would stand up and make trumpet noises. McKay would laugh uproariously and I would shush them both. Meanwhile, while I was turned to the right, Kimball ducked under the sacrament table and curled in the corner.

"Kimball! Come out of there right now!" No response. Rather, McKay ducked under the table after him.

"Kimball, I am going to count to five. I need you out! One. Two." He came out. McKay followed, all smiles.

But now Kimball was upset with me. He refused to stand, to sing, to do anything asked of him. He said he felt sick. So I sent him off the stand to lie down on the first row. Within five minutes he was down there making headstands and the Primary Presidency sent him back.

But McKay was worse. He laughed and chatted and bounced and twirled and opened that stupid microphone drawer over and over. I told him he would have to spend the meeting sitting with his parents, at which point he refused to budge from his chair at all. Even when required to sing or speak, until I was busy hissing at Jonathan or Kimball.

During one of these memorable moments McKay took off -- ran off the stage and down the aisle.

Perhaps I should follow him, thought I. No. No. I actually think this will work a lot better with him running around down there.

The Primary Presidency sent him back.

And Jonathan was not an angel, by any stretch. He kept turning backwards in his chair to make faces at the other children, copied immediately by McKay.

"Jonathan, put your bum on your chair!" I said sternly. "If I have to keep reminding you, you get to spend the meeting with Daddy as well." Jonathan turned around quickly.

"McKay! Put your bum on your chair!" McKay turned to me with big,wide, innocent eyes and said, "You just said the B word."

Bum bum bum bum bum! This post is full of the B word. Shield your eyes.

We have been banned. Today during the program, we will come up for the beginning, stick around long enough for our class to say our parts, and then be dismissed back to sit with parents. The Primary Presidency was clever enough to reach this decision on their own.

Jonathan was upset. After all, he only made trumpeting noises and silly faces at the rows behind him. He never ran loops around the benches or did handstands in the front row.

The Primary President has deemed that Jonathan can have another chance, if he is sitting right next to me. Kimball and McKay are out.

They are bums.

****

This post should be over, but it's not. The worst part of it all is that when I flipped through my lesson manual yesterday evening to prepare today's lesson, I found that the topic is "Being reverent during the sacrament meeting." And that the lesson manual expects a full hour of class time during which the little angels will discuss with wide eyes how special it is to sit quietly and think about Jesus. Followed by the sweet dears singing gently in their sacrament program.

The horror! The horror!