07/08/2007

It's a week for making memories

By Kathy Gibbons
Features editor
kgibbons@
record-eagle.com

Read Kathy's past columns here

Today's Northern Living story about the National Cherry Festival creating memories jogged some for me.

People who live here know that when children in area schools hit first grade, they get a chance to be Cherry Festival princes and princesses. Most schools draw names to select one boy and one girl to be junior royals. What that means to the parents is that they probably get to be in charge or nearly in charge of building their school's float. They can also expect to spend most of the week squiring their kids around to all of the official functions in which they participate while trying to keep them clean, cool and even-tempered — no small feat with 6-year-olds.

Some schools quietly ask parents ahead of time if it's OK to include their kids' names in the drawings, and some quietly opt out.

Anyway, the selection came and went when my son was in first grade. He never mentioned it. I don't think he paid any attention.

Not so when, three years later, it's first grade for his sister. They hold the drawing. And she comes home that day after school, in tears. Her name wasn't chosen.

"But I wanted to be a princess,” she wailed.

It's one of those crocodile parent commiseration moments where you tell them how sorry you are and console them, while inside, you breathe a big sigh of relief that finding a barn and a wagon to build a float in and on are not going to be your problems. And I went on to help build the float that year, which meant she and her brother got to ride on it anyway, which she saw as the next best thing to having the actual sash.

But the Cherry Festival has given us lots of good memories over the years. With an early July birthday, my daughter's party inevitably included a sleepover combined with a visit to the carnival each year — preferably on Kids Day, when prices are lower. There were the years we decorated their bikes with cherries and made cherry shirts and bandannas for walking in the kids' parade.

For many festivals, we volunteered to work in the souvenir tent, or the Pepsi tent, or recycling tent, or brat tent, to earn money for our soccer teams. As the person in charge of recruiting people to work these jobs for several years, and as someone who always enjoyed volunteering in those capacities, I've thought there should be a bank of people like me who no longer have a cause to earn money for, but would be willing to volunteer ourselves out to other groups who need to fill a certain number of shifts with a certain number of people.

Long-time readers know that I have countless memories of Gibby Fries; I hope to make some more this week. And then there have been the many fireworks, and parades, over the years.

While the festival attracts a lot of people from out of town, it's a little time out from business as usual for the rest of us, too.

So enjoy. Maybe this week, you'll make some memories of your own.