Anarchy in the S-P-A (in)

So we are headed into the final "push over the cliff" as Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap fame might say. In the past week we have hosted friends from Maine (it was really super-great to see them here), finished School Year Abroad (final meeting is tomorrow, students left last Wednesday), and met my dad in Barcelona (and brought him back to Zaragoza with us). Indeed this has been a week of "finishing up" things. Here are a few:

• SYA ended officially last Wednesday with a nice, long, faculty dinner followed by a 2 a.m. send-off of the bus filled with happy/sad students headed towards Madrid and their flight home. Then we had a VERY civilized 4 days to recover from the end of the year before faculty meetings.
• My yoga/pilates teacher (don't laugh, I really DID exercise all year) left the gym I attend, leaving me with one month of either starting with a new teacher, trying to work out with no one telling me what to do (harder than it sounds), or losing all the ground I gained in strength and flexibility this year. Maybe I'll just spend all day in the sauna.
• Sunday was the official end of Chaia's team season. (Oct-May). On Sunday morning we attended Chaia's final exhibition of Rhythmic Gymnastics. If you've never seen "Rítmica" before, it's kinda-sorta dance, kinda-sorta gymnastics, and loud music. And bright red plastic balls. Or hula-hoops. Anyone want to buy a slightly-used black leotard and dance shoes?
• Sunday was also the end of Ben's Soccer team season (every Saturday for EVER). The team, along with their parents, met at a tennis/swim/soccer/eating club for a day of fun, eating, swimming, soccer, and chaos. First, the kids played soccer together. Then the parents played against the kids. It was an interesting game, as the parents who felt like running around in the 90-degree sun were outnumbered by their kids, 15-5. Also, these kids are good, and I don't mean "kid-good." These 10-year olds might beat an average prep school thirds team. They certainly whipped us real good. then, we ate lunch. This is where the "chaos" comes in, and it deserves its own paragraph.

The Paragraph(s).

We sat down to lunch inside the club, in a big banquet room with a number of other groups celebrating birthdays and the coming of the HOT wind to Zaragoza (it has now officially replaced the COLD wind). One big table full of adults, and one big table full of ten-year old boys and their "lucky" sisters. So if you can imagine it, half of the parents had NO EYES on the kids.

Can you visualize where I'm going with this?

All year, we have been told that our children are models of good manners, and that people have never seen children so well behaved. On Sunday we discovered just how true this can be. Have you ever read Lord Of The Flies? The kids in the book were a Model-U.N. compared to the table directly behind us. First of all, you will have to imagine the noise inside the restaurant. For most Americans, the roar of a Spanish restaurant is unimaginable, but I'll do my best. Imagine for a moment that you are in a sports arena. Now make it the Boston Garden. You are on your feet, and the Celtics have just won the NBA championship for the 18th time (my prediction). Now imagine the cheering. Now imagine that there is a Who concert going on in the room at the same time. Now imagine that your waitress is reading you your choices for lunch from 20 feet away.

It's a little like that.

So on top of the inability to see or hear our kids, every once in a while our peripheral vision would catch a piece of bread flying across the table or a glass shattering all over Ben ("I am not making this part up", as Dave Barry would say). This lunch was what gave me the title for this entry, as I have never seen a more chaotic, messier meal in my life, and that includes the now-famous Loker School 6th-grade food fight of 1977 (I will neither confirm or deny my presence that day). Seriously, the table looked like a Jackson Pollock painting with bread crumbs on it. Our kids gave up early, ate quickly, and went outside do do something safer, like play in traffic. And in spite of my very best "teacher glare" (and I DO have one), I could do nothing to slow down the carnage at the kids' table. Seriously, I spent the last 20 minutes of the meal waiting for the boys to start throwing bread at ME. the best I was able to do was to grab one kid's hand as he was about to lob an empty mussel shell across the table. We finally sent them out to play more soccer (a tired puppy is a good puppy) before they started to light each other on fire.

By the way, the girls were picture-perfect. How is it, now, that every president of the US has been a man?