Bramley Famli

Last Friday morning was an ‘Award Assembly’ for Carli and Jordi. Carli was being presented with her medals from the Central Gauteng Gymnastics Comp she’d participated in, and Jordi was receiving a Merit Certificate for points collected at school.

I was standing at the back of the hall with some of the teachers and one or two parents.

Award Assembly is an exciting time for this particular dad. Huge doses of pride flow through my veins and want to explode into my immediate environment. Carli and Jordi have tempered this by threatening me with my life if I show too much outward enthusiasm. Jord especially, is arriving at that age where parents can be embarrassing for simply showing up : ) I’m allowed get as excited as I want, as long as it’s quiet and there is little to no physical outworking of it. I’m fairly well trained in this regard, most of the time.

Carli got her medals first. I wanted to shout her name out, and clap and whistle. But I sucked it in, thinking about how she’s finding my public enthusiasm for her achievements less and less cute. Jordi was up next. With Jordi things are very clear. Whatever I want to put out there, no matter how appropriate, if it’s going to draw attention to her, DON’T!!

I don’t know what it was? Maybe the build up from Carli. Maybe because I thought I’d blend in with the rest of the noise coming from proud parents like me? Maybe it was because I got a quick attack of stupid? But whatever it was, I clapped. Not wild applause. Just 4 or 5 sharp claps. Not very expressive as expressive goes. Certainly not a fair representation of what I was really feeling at the time. But 4 or 5 sharp claps in a hall full of people who, at that moment aren’t making any noise, I discovered, is very very loud.

There was a collective intake of breath, as heads spun around to see who had clapped?

I immediately found Jordi’s eyes and surprisingly she didn’t look too fussed. Miracle. Perhaps she didn’t know it was me?

I found her after assembly to check in with her, and make sure I hadn’t done any permanent damage? Her response was short and to the point, “Oh dad, I knew it was you, but it’s cool, my friends are used to you now.” A quick hug, a “see you later”, and she was off.

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 1st, 2011 at 10:24 am and is filed under School . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.