The Beginning

Errol: A while back, Zoe’s teacher joked about having Debs & Errol come to her class. I didn’t think much about it because, well, why would anyone want that? 😀 But I found out that Zoe, my daughter of 7, really wanted me to come. She normally doesn’t like to tell me anything that may seem to hint at being positive towards me, so she got her mom to tell me.

It wasn’t too long before I setup a time with Ms. Briones, and we were scheduled for June 13th!

Debs: I was a little bit confused as to why Errol wanted to get to the school so early (8:40am) for set-up. It’s because he wanted to use a PA because I’m too soft. Honestly, I can be really, really loud when I want to be and I do get the soulful, theatrical solos in choir sometimes. I think the problem is that Errol is too loud. Yes, I’m sticking to that.

You were way too soft. They would have eaten you alive. Single folk always underestimate kids. 😀 *LAUGH*

Debs: I was a camp counsellor, you know. Try keeping 20 four-year-olds under control by yourself! Ug. My jaw dropped when I first saw the classroom. There were colours EVERYWHERE. Every single inch of wall space was filled with something by the kids or some sort of creative teaching aid. They had a poster about the elements of design!!!

Some of the chairs had wiggly seat things in them which are designed to help kids who tend to fidget sit still. 

I sat on one of them. It felt strange.

It had me thinking back to my private elementary school where the walls started and stayed white (at $4K a year tuition, really?) and you were forced to sit in alphabetical order in rows of paired desks. I was new to the school and I had to sit next to Moshe Israel who was one of those rowdy boys. You know the type. I didn’t like that AT ALL. A couple of months ago, I met him at the Imperial Pub (his family owns it) and that was really cool!  (And she began to tell stories on how much she didn’t like Moshe. Poor Moshe.)

Debs: He goes by Mo now and I like him just fine. 🙂 

Anyway, we gave them a CD so that they could listen before hand, and they gave us a list of songs to sing!

• Geek Love Song
• AT-ATs in the Snow
• Narwhal Pet
• Cuz He’s a Geek Guy
• Let’s Vomit Exclusively
• Walkthrough

They chose was WALKTHROUGH! Can you believe it? I vetoed that pretty quickly. You can also listen to these songs on Bandcamp.

The Set

We pretty much did our normal set, but I interrupted a lot. We also did Tie After Tie, giving us two Star Wars songs. However, a few of them wanted to hear Adele, so Debs sung Rolling in the Deep.

One highlight was getting the kids to write their own song! We asked them for four words, and they gave us: Summer, Cheese, Adele and Noodles. So we made a song called “Summer Cheesy Noodles with Adele”. Or something like that.

Debs: Umm…this is creeping me out.

Will I eventually upload the song? Yes. I’m pretty awful in it though, so I think it would be more detrimental to our career if I did.

Debs: No! Don’t do it! It was in an awful key for me!

However, we also did “Let’s Vomit Exclusively” and they really wanted to hear that. Crazy kids. Here is a vid of us performing this live. It’s not one of our normal songs:

In the end, we sang Super Dad and the kids danced around and we had all sorts of fun! And then we got to sign their autograph book. The best thing, they all had nametags, so I could call them by their name as opposed to Thing 1 and Thing 2.

Did I mention Max? No, I don’t think I did. He was the helper for the day, and one of the few people in the room that actually understood our songs. I would put a picture of him up, but I don’t have one. I called him Matt for a whole hour until my wife texted me and told me that I got his name wrong. She came to help out, which was great, else I’d be calling him Matt the whole time.

Debs: She texted you! Hahaha!

Anyway, we had a GREAT time, and for those of you in Zoe’s class, you can check out the wiki for more fun pics. That is how awesome Ms. Briones is, they have a WIKI for their class!! You can’t get more awesome than that. I wish I had a wiki.

Thanks, Grade 2! Thanks, Max! Thanks, Dove! And thanks, Ms. Briones for a super fun time! And you should see what they sent us! Why, I’ll show you!

Will we do more kid events in the future? I behaved, so maybe they’ll let us come back. 😀

Debs: I hope so! It was really fun! And Zoe didn’t seem hopelessly embarrassed so Errol gets major dad points!