VIP week

At least it's not a duck. Or a guinea pig. Or any other creature that we needed to keep alive over the weekend.

Meet Little Bear, the much-loved, somewhat crusty teddy bear with a tattered felt cape that came home from school with AJ last week. The reason for this special treat? AJ is the "VIP student" this week in his kindergarten class.

This is the second time we've been through the experience, having experienced "Star Student" week in preschool last year. I'm starting to suspect it'd be more appropriate for VIP to refer to Visibly Irritated Parent. Why does celebrating a student have to be so much work? And we really do it to ourselves. It's all about keeping up and surpassing the Joneses.

AJ jumped off the bus Friday afternoon and came running to the house. He was barely in the door before he opened the special bag that carried Little Bear, along with a journal in which we were supposed to record the bear's adventures. I paged through it briefly, noting that each previous VIP's mother had written a story that was roughly one-page in length.

Several pages in, Emma's mom had to ruin it for the rest of us by adding a photo she'd printed out that showed Emma riding her bike with Little Bear. Really? You had to raise the stakes by adding a picture? I've met Emma's mom. I used to like her. Not anymore! Every subsequent child's story included a picture, so of course - come Sunday evening - there I was at Walmart picking up a printout of the the photo you saw above. (Zoe's mom tried to up the ante even more by including not only a photo, but also a picture that Zoe had colored of Little Bear. Thankfully the following week's parent didn't take the bait, and that trend quickly died.)

In retrospect, it would have been smart for me to review the entire contents of the VIP take-home bag before my visit to WalMart. Because it was as I was packing up Little Bear and his journal that I discovered the "All about me" poster that also was supposed to be completed and returned. I put AJ to work coloring, and helped him spell out the answers to questions such as "My favorite place is..." (his answer: the Cities because he likes to visit his uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents.) We then picked out some of this photos of himself playing hockey, soccer and baseball, and I printed them out using our computer's printer.

They're not the greatest, but they're good enough. I decided the insanity had to end. Next week's parent can thank me later.