Lunar New Year Fiasco
For some reason, the elementary school that my kids went to had a Lunar New Year celebration fairly late into the month. Something about timing and scheduling threw things off, but my 7 year old daughter E and 5 year old son C were excited nonetheless. They had such a fun time the last year that they were really looking forward to it this year.
After school that day, we all ate dinner early to get ready to depart. I asked my wife if we should bring our 1 year old son L or if she wanted to stay at home with him while I look E and C to the Lunar New Year festivities. To my surprise, she wanted all of us to go, so off we went.
WHen we got there, everyone was happy. We found seats in the back of the auditorium and got ready for some shows. There was a lot of people around, but luckily plenty of space for us to spread out still. Then the shows started and there were a lot of them. They also found the weird need to have an AI generated host to narrate between each show. It was honestly pretty weird and all of the kids in the audience started to get restless after an hour.
Last year, the shwos lasted about an hour and they opened the other section of the school so everyone could walk around and play games. There was prizes to win and some food to eat. It was pretty cool. I thought this year, the schedule would be similar, so we decided to get up and walk out into the hallway to get ready to go into the other section of the school.
To my surprise (second one of the night), the shows continued and continued. It was now almost at the two hour mark and we were not sure when the other section of the school was opening. My kids started going crazy and running through folded up tables to occupy the time. L was getting cranky. There were more and more people in the hallways, which also made things extra crowded. Since it was so close to L’s bedtime, I decided to call it a night given all the things that were going on (and lack of the thing that should be going on).
E started to cry. She was so sad she couldn’t play any games or win any prizes. Last year, C won a little snake stuffy and she was so sad she didn’t win one. She wanted to play games this year to try and win something, but things didn’t turn out the way she wanted. I think E cried almost the whole way home and we had to have a few talks with her. I told her that next time, we could try and stay longer since L would be older.
I felt bad that she was sad, but I was also wanting her to stop crying over something like this because things don’t always go your way. A little friction in life is good and hopefully it teaches her to eventually roll with the punches. We will see how next year goes and hopefully it isn’t a fiasco the next time around.
