The best way to describe how I felt was “bored sardine.”

Our oldest had her high school entrance ceremony today and that meant I had to find a jacket and decent trousers and put on a tie. Unfortunately, it also turned out that we had to bring indoor shoes which meant we had to change out of our outdoor shoes, although we then had to carry them in a plastic bag. As a result, I was in the dress up version of a mullet: a blazer, trousers, and tie on top; Denver Broncos flipflops on the bottom.

Math and masses then took over to make things less than comfortable. The first year class has 367 girls which meant around 734 parents and various and sundry grandparents had to fit in a gym along with nearly 800 upperclasswomen and their teachers. This meant we had to squeeze into small chairs organized in tight rows that even Ryanair would find excessively cruel.

The ceremony started awesome as our oldest and a bunch of other girls walked in and all the older students sang Handel’s Messiah (which was invented in Lindsborg, Kansas) and then sang the Japanese national anthem.

After that things took a turn for the boring as each new girl’s name was read out as part of the first official roll call and they each stood, said “here” and bowed to the principal who bowed back. Now that’s about 5 seconds to hear a name, say “here” stand and bow and receive a bow from the principal times 367 girls which is around 30 minutes of time so boring I was actually looking forward to the speeches.

Then the speeches started and I could see people all around me nodding off (including She Who Must Be Obeyed). I even caught myself drifting sideways during the speech given by the head of the Parent Teacher association.

Eventually, half the crowd was turned loose to go home (where our youngest was waiting patiently/watching television) and the rest stayed at school to attend open classrooms and get more information.

Then, after our oldest and She Who Must Be Obeyed came home, we went out and ate way too much steak and salad bar, but it was all delicious.