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Show-stopping Spectacles

I really don't want to be that dad. In a way I already am because I'm not Japanese and pretty much everyone around here is. But I don't want to add to it by being aggressively crazy in public.

We were on the kindergarten bus and I turned around and told Kenzo to come sit with me. He stared back at me with a bit of fear in his eyes and shook his head no. The bus took off again so I had to leave it there.

I kept turning around and giving my evil eye face to Kenzo, his friend who was being super obnoxious, the friend's mom who was completely checked out, and pretty much the entire back section of the kindergarten school bus. At one point, very tactfully and not all crazy dad like, but deliberately enunciated in Japanese so the whole gallery could catch my drift, I said, "Stop talking about Osamu." My voice came out pretty chilly. That was the goal.

Osamu and Eri were sitting in the front of the kindergarten bus because that's where Osamu wanted to sit and that's who he wanted to sit with. I was sitting toward the back, by myself, with the bags. Kenzo was in the very back of the bus with his friends. Usually it's assigned seating but today was special so the kids could sit wherever they wanted.

Kenzo's friend Ibuki was talking about Osamu and saying not nice things. Apparently this was not the first time. He thinks it's funny. His mom doesn't seem to be the type to tell him to knock it off. I am, however, the type of dad to tell not only my own kids but other people's kids to shut their pie holes.

This was on the way home from the big kindergarten Christmas pageant - three hours of show-stopping spectacles, and free coffee.

Kenzo played a sheep herder and a chorus angel in the nativity musical. His big line is at the 16:05 mark.


He was nervous going in, but he didn't admit it. After his play he and his classmates/castmates were shaking with excitement and a huge sense of achievement.





When the curtain rose on this epic production a chorus of angels was singing angelically.


One of them seemed a little... disinterested.



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