Winter Concert Time
By
Gerry Niskern
Have you been to a Winter Concert this year? Perhaps you know it as the annual grade school Christmas program?
Do you remember attending your kid’s programs, or even better, do you recall getting your own chance to perform in school programs?
Eons ago, when I was in first grade our class played in the Christmas concert but not by singing. We were in a Rhythm Band. I remember different kids playing the bells, drums, tambourines, triangles, blocks and best of all, the symbols. I earned the position of the lone symbol player by being the tallest in the class. We wore red capes as we marched into the auditorium with me banging those brass disks together as hard as I could.
When my # one son was in second grade, years later, his class marched down the center aisle in their pajamas, wearing round tarboosh fi hats, and singing “This old man, he played paddy-wack on my thumb,”
A year later my #two, five year old son chose to be a mesquito in a play about (I’m not really sure) I had to make a pair of mesquito wings and he insisted on painting a pointed card board cylinder black and having it attached to his nose so that, in his words, “he could fly around and sting the rest of the kids”.
Now, this year, my great-great-grandaughter’s Winter concert was last Friday.She really wanted her Daddy to be there. This kindergartener loves to perform and we knew she had been practicing hard. Everyone in both families was hoping he could get off work, by everyone I mean at least four grandmothers! We knew if he got to attend then we would get to see a video at least. Then suddenly, on Friday evening, there it was . The video. Her classmates were filling up the risers to start their act. And there she was. top row, on the end. Our singer had turned director as she pointed out where each one was supposed to stand.
That’s our girl!