PRIMARY 1 NAILS IT

Here it comes.  I brace myself as the conductor-cum-child-herder raises her hands to call the primary choir to order.  It’s time to unleash the cutest thing anybody has seen - at least since last year’s carol concert.  It’s time to forget the stress and endless 'to do' lists that mark the irrevocable descent into Christmas.  Forget for a moment the on-going pressure of locating, securing, hiding, wrapping, hiding again and covertly depositing the small mountain of gifts gradually converging on the house from all four corners of the globe. The audience holds its collective breath in a state of anticipatory rapture.  This is it, the pay off.

Primary 1 stands up, hands held together neatly in front, hair carefully coiffured, uniforms ironed and pristine.  It’s taken weeks - months.  After near-continuous rehearsals the words are firmly lodged in the kids’ subconscious. They don’t know it yet, but thirty years later they’ll still be driving them crazy as they loop endlessly through their head in a congested and foul tempered Asda carpark the week before Christmas.  The teacher pats her head and by some kind of miracle every child produces reindeer antlers from somewhere, summoning forth an involuntary ‘Ahhhh’ from mothers’ throats, and a small measure of bile from mine.

A clonky intro on the piano and they’re off, mouths wide, chins up, eyes closed - four rows of near-identical finger puppets twitching spasmodically in time to the frantic arm movements of their controller.  By the end of the second verse the audience has reached near orgasmic bliss, and is pushed over the edge by the third which introduces an assortment of vaguely relevant farmyard animal impersonations.  The antlers, become horns, then ears, and the parents become putty in their waving, flapping, clapping hands.  Most laugh, some cry.  Mothers fall back in love with the small creature they shrieked at for a protracted period that morning for leaving its violin in the bus shelter, and fathers begin to think that the school fees might be worth it after all. 

But then, just when it seems the song is over and the Everest summit of cuteness has been attained, Primary 1 delivers its killer blow. A jazz hands finish.  The audience is stunned temporarily by this re-definition of what cuteness can be.  By the jaw-dropping spectacle of the sweeping cutescape that opens up before them. Then they clap, then they cheer, then they thunder.  Several people stand up without realising it, enrapt in an ecstasy that temporarily lifts them out of themselves and deposits them on a higher plane of infant devotion.  Once everyone’s stood up, and there’s nowhere higher to go, they revert to roaring, stamping their feet and wolf whistling.  

Primary One begins fidgeting nervously as the scene unfolds before it.  Several couples rip off each other’s clothes and copulate in the centre isle, their passion re-ignited by the showbiz genius of their offspring.  A number of delirious fathers stage dive into the third and fourth rows, and the primary teacher is hoisted up and passed triumphantly around the auditorium high above the heads of the seething crowd.  The headmaster mounts the stage and begs the audience to control itself, but is quickly swallowed up in a mob of adoring mothers, scrabbling to secure a token shred of his clothing.

There’s only one thing that can be done and, extracting himself from the scrum down of parental passion, the headmaster does it.  He calls the school jazz orchestra on stage.

Thank God for that. The first bars of White Christmas splurge out across the hall and arousal levels return to normal.  Stage diving fathers return to their seats and assume their customary forced smiles.  Molesting mothers replace their faux fur stoles and take up position at their sides, applying themselves to the traditional task of trying to attract the attention of their child without attracting attention to themselves. 

And as Primary 1 is led off for counselling, I return to leafing through the programme and fantasising about the end of the show and the twelve carol-free months until the next.

Other Christmas overthoughts: Swegways (and other villainous alien species)


@jesoverthinksit