Rabid mobs

Last year, round about this time, I blogged about being told off for not registering my not-yet-one year old kids for kindergarten. So, I've spent the year looking around for a school that HASN'T started their registration and doesn't have a wait list that's 2000 deep. I thought I found one. It didn't open registration till the year before the kid is to be admitted and registration to the public only opens on a particular date and didn't have a wait list.

I'd also heard good things about it. It's a Methodist kindy. It's near enough to us and there is a straight bus home if we were brave enough to try that with two kids. It's got a nice premises and a seemingly good programme. So I thought, 'cool, my search is over.' Little did I know. Registration was today so I rang on Friday to find out what time it was and what I needed to bring along with me. And since I was on the phone with the office, I asked about the number of vacancies there were for the twins' nursery class next year. Very matter a factly, the lady told me 10!

There was a stunned silence on my end because I was led to believe that the registration hadn't opened. Where had all the other places gone to? Siblings etc I was told. That got me a little bit stressed because despite the consolation that each child will be able to find a kinder spot according to the press (who usually speaks on behalf of the government), I needed to find a kindy that suited our and the kids' needs. That meant, near enough to us, Christian if possible, with teachers who spoke their principal language with fluency and grammatical a necessity. That last one was the hardest to find. Even where they are now, the English is not fantastic and my consolation is, the twins are still pre-verbal and are learning words. The grammar bit is not paramount now so it is ok for now. Plus I try to do damage control at home. Anyway, that's my impetus for wanting to move them.

Of course, Packrat's consolation when I moaned to him about the 10 spots left was that we could just leave them where they are which is true though not ideal. After speaking to a friend who has her son at our kindy of choice, the only option was to fight for the 10 spots if I really wanted the twins there. That meant, getting there at the break of dawn. Well, as close to that as possible. The plan for the day had to be

1. Get up earlier to shower and express.
2. Go kiss twins good bye before they were up because I wouldn't be home by the time they were.
3. Send Packrat to school.
4. Mosey over to the kindy and queue.

That was supposed to give me about an hour before registration opened to sit and twiddle my thumbs. What I didn't count on was

1. Choked up roads and congestion causing me to take 40 minutes on a route that would take 10 minutes off peak.
2. Have all the car park lots taken and then having to look for street parking further away from the school.
3. Parents who were there at 6 in the morning, who obviously had more tenacity than I did.

Olie had suggested that I count up to ten people and then leave since there was no chance. But it occurred to me that these parents were all queuing for different things. There were 4 levels and 2 sessions up for grabs so I decided to just stake my ground and pray for the best. Also according to Olie, the tiny chairs we were sitting on and my ass was spilling over were made that way because, any more comfortable, parents would not leave. Clever girl, that Olie. I think anyone who would voluntarily sit on those chairs for a long period of time was just asking to get bum problems and to me, once every few years, was more than enough. (I'm forseeing having to do it when they go for orientation)

I settled down for my long wait ( I was 20 something in line at 0800hrs) with a sandwich, a drink and a book. But soon became distracted and sociologically tuned in to the conversations that were happening. I felt very removed from it and refused to be party to the nervous chatter. It reminded me far too much of the nervous chatter that was always present outside exam halls before the paper started. It was never healthy, it always made one more nervous than necessary as well as inadequate. And the conversations flying round, really did make me more nervous than I needed to be.

Topics discussed.
1. How there were no vacancies left in the kindy. (Ondine's thought bubble: why then are there so many of them here?)
2. How good Eton, Chiltern and Julia Gabriel was. How their yet-to-be-3-year-old could string grammatically right sentences together. (Thought bubble: Then why are you registering your kid/kids here if Eton/Chiltern/ Julia Gabriel is so great?)
3. The teacher-student ratio and the number of classes in the kindy (Thought bubble: Ooops, was I supposed to find that out? And obviously I was because I got asked by someone else later on and I got an extremely incredulous look when I professed my ignorance).
4. Primary schools and their rankings. (Thought bubble: One step at a time.)
5. Enrichment classes that their 18 month olds are going to. (At this point, one turned to me and asked if I knew of good enrichment classes. I wonder if I'd said "my kids can juggle chain saws and read Aramaic, can yours?" Would that have stunned them? Or would they have asked in all seriousness where they could sign up for those classes)
6. Discussing the various wait lists of kindys. These are all popular kindys by the way. St James (known for its Odyssey of the Mind programme and swimming pool), Nanyang (known for its Chinese), Newton Life (also known for its Chinese and connections that the child will make *cue rolling of eyes here*) and Marymount (I don't know... big playground?)

So, I steered clear of participating or reacting to it. Of course, as always the case, I'm sure I got branded and labelled very quickly as the snooty one who deigned it below her to participate. When in actual fact, I would have had nothing to contribute because I did not have a kid in any of the schools mentioned and did not bother enough to find out about ratios, trusting that it was a good enough kindy not to fleece us and cannot imagine why those were the only conversation topics sailing across my head.

The only person I actually spoke to was the office staff who came round to give out numbers for the classes we were queuing to get into. And I just said the necessary. Nursery 1 ( I had to double check this on the form because the numbering system confuses the heck out of me!), morning session, 2 please. And Praise God! I got 2 numbers which I unblinkingly refused to believe meant I got 2 places until the lady next to me who'd been telling everyone she was writing on the application that her husband was an alumni of the college that is under the same Methodist umbrella, got one too and was told she was the last one. Which meant, I got the 2nd last 2 vacancies! Yay me! Yay the twins!

That's when ruckus erupted around me because there were no more spots and a father demanded to know why he couldn't put his kid on wait list and wanted to know why I could get 2 of the precious numbers and he got none. If I hadn't been so cowed or stunned that I actually got places for my kids, I would have snarkily asked him if he thought it was good enough that my twins went to school on alternate days. But I didn't lest I get beaten up. Headlines- Mom gets beaten up for being smart to father in kindy registration queue!

So prodigious I felt my luck, as did Olie who'd been giving me support over SMS, that I had to photograph it. Of course Olie had a better reason. Lest the father wrestle the numbers from me and made a dash for it, at least I'd have proof that I had them first. Of course, with these new-fangled phone cameras that are by law required to make noise when they photograph, everyone would know that I was trying to photograph my numbers and it might be mis-read as gloating.

Hence the surreptitious and very blurred looking photo of my ticket numbers. Apparently, there were 13 places, 3 more than I was told. And thankfully for that too! Otherwise I'd be out looking for another kindy for the twins.

















My message to Packrat was "I emerge victorious but a little bit scathed". Scathed because I'd never seen this scary breed of mothers so close up. I'd heard about them and read their posts on forums but never quite had such close contact. And I can imagine why they are like that. They feed off one another. They feed of the anxiety, the competition and the stress. They talk about their kids and their achievements like that card game we played as kids, Top Trumps, where you compared the make of your car/ plane etc and compare wing spans and maximum speeds.

I don't want to be like that. Of course, I show some signs of it already, by buying into it and actually queuing for spots and finding out where I could possibly send the twins to rather than leave it to chance. Apparently, if I am a Stay-at-Home-Mom, there is a danger that I become much more like that because for many of them, their lives only revolve around extra lessons for the kids and the kids' achievement. And as is, I am already judged because I do not participate in many of such pursuits. Am I being punished because what I do and how I behave makes a mockery of how other moms have chosen to define their lives? Perhaps. Is it healthy? Probably not. Is it obsessive? I should say so. Is it contagious? I'd say most probably. Is it scary? Most definitely.

I dread doing this again with even higher stakes when the kids need to go to primary school. I think this is the point where, once again, moving, is a good idea.

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