Vanity, Thy Name Is Declan

Since he started in September, Declan has thrived at his little school, and my initial hesitation at sending him to a religious school (I am a raging heathen, Dan is a reformed Catholic) has completely dispersed after seeing just how wonderfully he’s doing there… although I still wince a little internally when he sings hymns to me and asks if we could all sit down and “talk to Jesus as a family”, but at the same time I don’t discourage it at all, because I really don’t want to undermine what his teacher’s are teaching him. Although I don’t believe in a deity or prophets, I think the whole love thy neighbour/turn the other cheek/don’t kill anybody teachings are all pretty good lessons to learn in life.

Tonight we’re going to Declan’s graduation ceremony, held in their church, he is graduating from pre-kindy (aka the diet coke of kindergarten) to real, proper, ridgy-didge kindergarten. The one where, in his words, you “learn properly and get to wear a BLUE uniform!”.

Have you seen The Incredibles? There’s a scene where Helen berates Bob for not attending his sons “graduation”… let me briefly imdb (is that a verb? It should be. I am making it a verb now.)

Helen: I can’t believe you don’t want to go to your own son’s graduation.
Bob: It’s not a graduation. He is moving from the 4th grade to the 5th grade.
Helen: It’s a ceremony!
Bob: It’s psychotic! They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity.

Mr Incredible, can I call you Bob? I am totally with you on this one. I had no intentions of attending, I have a newborn, I haven’t had time to fix my roots, and really, why celebrate something so inevitable? Does that add yet another thing onto my “Bad Mum” column? Probably. Do I care? Nope. Does my son? Hell yes.

I’d missed a lot of Declan’s life for three weeks whilst I was in hospital looking after Ronan, and had no idea just how excited my biggest boy was about the concept of graduating, and the moment I got home started telling me how wonderful it was all going to be, he was going to get a certificate, and get up ON THE STAGE and Mummy, Daddy and Connor were going to sit in the church and watch him sing a song ON THE STAGE! OMGZ THE STAGE!”

I asked him if Ronan was allowed to come to. He literally facepalmed himself for forgetting his newest brother, and said of course he could come, “but if Ronan comes to the church with you… you need to make sure you have your boobies out”

o.O

Because if I didn’t burst into flames upon entering the church, Declan was going to make sure as hell that by the end of the night I would end up a charred pile of bones, and what better way to do that than pulling out my norks in a holy place?

He quickly picked up on my confusion and explained it all to me…

“When you’re in the church Mrs G. says we have to be VERY quiet and respectful, especially when I’m ON THE STAGE!!! singing my song. If you have your boobies out then Ronan will be quiet and everyone in the audience will be able to hear me properly.”

Of course, my son doesn’t want to buy me a one way ticket to hell, he just wants to make sure everyone’s attention is completely on him (and the seventeen other students that he seems to forget will be up there singing with him), that makes far more sense!

I know I’m not totally educated on the whole religious stuff, my knowledge of the seven sins comes soley from a certain Brad Pitt movie, but Vanity was one of them, right?