I Never Could Pass for Britney Spears

Back in the day, I was a young mom...and I had 4 young kids...and they all went to the public schools in the small town where we lived.

One year, each one of them went to a different school. Thaaaaaaat's right...4 kids, 4 different schools.

Thankfully, I only had one year like that, because it was crazy!

I enjoyed volunteering in my kids' schools when I could. The school I volunteered in the most was Clark's elementary school. I tried to go once a week if I could. I would help in Clark's classroom, or help the teacher run off stuff for the class. Sometimes, I helped in the office.

At Clark's school, all guests had to sign in at the office. My friend, Robbie, was the receptionist. It was always so fun seeing her and getting to visit. So every time I went, I signed in and got a name-tag...and I signed-out when I left.

So, the year that the kids were all in different schools, I was in that office every afternoon to check Clark out early. With 4 kids, it was always a trick trying to figure out who to get first...who had after-school practice, who had piano, etc. For the first few years Clark was at this school, he did not want to be the last one picked up...so I checked him out early every day.

Now, the "bus kids" left a few minutes before the car-riders, so I just checked him out when they left.

Every.single.day.

But that's beside the point. The point is that I was there a lot, and I knew the teachers and the secretaries and the principal.

But the principal? He never knew my name. Or, if he did, he never called me by it. He was nice and polite, but it was always kind of awkward any time I had to talk with him.

And on the days that I had Joshua with me, he called him every name under the sun: "David," "Ben," "Dennis," "Billy," "Bobby," "John."

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

We lived in a small town. I thought everyone knew Joshua. 

WRONG.

But, at one point during this time, I let my frustrations over this get the best of me...and started writing random names on my name-tag. I checked in under my own name, but just put a different name on my name-tag. Let's see...I was Jennifer Aniston, Mariah Carey, Madonna, Brooke Shields, Barbara Bush.

On more than one occasion, I was Britney Spears.

And I just cracked myself up.

In my young(ish), naive mind, I never considered things like crazies with guns coming into the school...or tornadoes ripping everything apart. It never occurred to me that having my real name on my real name-tag might be important in identifying me.

I feel bad that I was so immature about it, because it was all about PRIDE. As much as I felt that a person I saw every.single.day would at least know my name, it ticked me off beyond belief that he couldn't even make the effort to call Joshua by the right name. Ugh.

And Joshua was completely unaware of this, and was just as happy as a clam, so this is what is called taking an offense from another, boys and girls.

Don't be like me.

Or, like I WAS.

I'm older now, and a little wiser. And catastrophic events like 9/11 happened while Clark was at that school, and it made me aware of the importance of the rules.

I never could've passed for Britney Spears, anyway.

And that's not a bad thing.

"Therefore, God elevated Him to the place of highest honor and gave Him the Name above all other names..." Philippians 2:9