purple popcorn pandemonium

My coworker, let's call her D, has been sick all week with the flu so I did something very crazy brave.  I volunteered to facilitate her preschool storytime.  Thankfully the day before D became sick we were chatting about our storytimes for the week.

This is how the conversation went:

"We're using the parachute," D shouted gaily.  "You should come watch us!"  

"Absolutely," I shouted happily. "I'd love to see how it works so I can use it one of my future storytimes!"

Maybe an hour after this conversation D announced she was sick and raced from the building.  

That's when the brave thing happened.  When she texted she wouldn't be in the next day, I volunteered to facilitate her storytime.  

The next day I arrived early, set up the meeting room for storytime and then practiced D's storytime from top to bottom, all the while pretending to use a parachute.  Seconds before storytime began I remembered I needed some fake popcorn for one of the activities and hurried to find some scrap paper to wad up (surprisingly no one made any comments about the purple popcorn).  

Everyone left storytime happy as can be so I'd say it was a success.  I did learn a few valuable kernels of information for my future parachute storytime.

First, when 20 kids shake a parachute there's no way anything can be heard, especially music.

So number two, all the songs that are played during the parachute activity should be mostly memorized so at least one person knows what the heck is going on.

And number three, the old saying, "the more the merrier" holds no bearings when folding up a parachute.  When twenty pairs of hands try to fold a parachute expect only chaos.  Chaos.  One preschooler didn't move in time and was nearly folded up in the parachute.  Thankfully, during one of my rare moments of agility and grace, I swooped in and lifted the child away from the fate of being rolled up like a piece of squashed, purple popcorn.

And yes, yours truly didn't even get the popcorn pieces out before folding it up.  It was chaos.  For adults, chaos equals stress.  For preschoolers, chaos is bliss.  Everyone roared with laughter when they realized a child was being folded up inside the parachute.  And as we attempted to fold the parachute - tripping, colliding, and tumbling around - the laughter was nearly as loud as the parachute when it was being shook by twenty excited kids.  

Just when I finally had the parachute folded and was stuffing it into the bag, a very Martha Stewart-like child put her hand on her hip and informed there was still popcorn inside the parachute that needed to be cleaned up.  

I bit my lip to keep from responding, but inside I was thinking, that bleepin' popcorn can rot in that parachute for all I care.

Instead I smiled sweetly, said thank you, and grabbed the next book to read.