Thursday, November 16, 2017

That Family

There's a payoff to tonight's winding tale, you guys. Stay with me.

Precocious Daughter's Fine Arts Trip, her last one as a high school student, is next April. The band, orchestra, and choir from her school are going to Colorado Springs. And it sounds like they're going to get to do some amazeball things, from touring the U.S. Olympic Training Center to visiting Garden of the Gods Park to performing at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

The coolest thing I did in April of my senior year was meet Douglas Adams and have him autograph my Hitchhikers Guide trilogy.

Not gonna lie, that was pretty damn cool.
PDaughter is very excited about this trip, and I've already promised her she could go. Possibly by selling a kidney. I mean, it's not an exorbitantly expensive excursion, considering that the price covers transportation, lodging, several meals, and all the fun things they have planned. But for me personally, it's almost three payments on Benedict Cumberhatch.

Eighteen more payments and he's mine, you guys.

Now, the band is doing a fundraiser that, if successful, will help defray each family's cost to send their little Snooky-Wookums on the trip. It involves a program called Shop with Scrip. I'm not going to dwell on it, but basically Shop with Scrip provides rebates to school programs every time participating members shop at any number of popular retailers, from Amazon to Target to Walmart.

(If any of my Drunkards are interested in participating in a fundraiser that costs them zero dollars and helps support PDaughter and her totally deserving school, let me know and I'll help you sign up. Beyond this brief plug, no pressure. Sincerely.)

Anyway, considering how convenient and rewarding the Shop with Scrip program is, a shockingly low number of families of Fine Arts students are actually signed up. I admit, I'm among the slugs. I'm a slug, what can I say?

Me, IRL.

So at tonight's Trip Meeting, we parents/families were treated to an entirely deserved guilt trip about why most of us were too goddamn lazy and selfish to participate in an easy-peasy means of funding the Fine Arts Trip.

While the handful of families who have embraced and used the program all along were acknowledged,  thanked, and given a pass from the WTF Is Wrong w You 101 lecture the rest of us (totally legit) received.

By the time we left the meeting, PDaughter and I were both fully fired up about registering to use Save with Scrip.

We signed up tonight, yo.

Because basically the Band Booster Mom (who is a lovely person) effusively praised those families using the Shop with Scrip program and guilt-tripped the crap out of the rest of us.

Not going to lie, I'm more than happy to participate and reduce my own (and everyone else's) out of pocket costs for this trip.

PDaughter is also happy. On the way home from the meeting at her school, she said to me...

...and I quote...

"We're going to do this. We're going to be That Family."

Guys.

We've never been That Family.

That Family that organizes the school carnival, Literacy Night, and/or any Show That You Love All the Children activity.

That Family that gives more than its fair share because it has piles of The Contributions laying around waiting to be donated.

That Family that is recognized as Making a Difference, as opposed to the slackers that just clapped and smiled when the real contributors were recognized.

That Family that is immune to guilt trips because we already form the backbone of our children's (and all their friends') Positive Secondary and Post-Secondary School Experience.

PDaughter is excited at the prospect of being That Family for once.

And if participating in this program will help, then dammit, we're all in.

Because...That Family.

Again, I'm not going to push, but the program is Save with Scrip, and PDaughter's high school is an easy and deserving subject of help.

Or help some kids local to you. That would be just as good.

Goddamn kids deserve all the help we can give, is what I'm saying.

Thanks, Drunkards. You rawk.

1 comment:

  1. Looks like you had your hands full. However, it is times like these that often make for excellent memeories later on down the road. Good luck with the car payments.

    ReplyDelete

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