Dee Dee has an after school Musical Theater class on Tuesdays.  So, at the end of the school day, I just pick up Audio.  On this Tuesday, there was a bake sale.  There had been emails and notices about it for a while.  Everything cost a dollar, so I brought two, two-dollar bills.  When Audio came out of school, I helped her zip up her jacket and pointed out the bake sale table to her.  She looked pleased about it, but not as excited as I thought she might be.  I picked her up for a better view and carried her to the table. 

One large dad set his son’s shoes on the table between some brownies and a tray of cookies while he worked out what he wanted.  One girl, who is a flag children on most days waved her hand across one end of the table and said, “All these are gluten-free.”  It seemed to take a long time for the large man to decide what he wanted.  In the meantime, Audio spotted some Fruity Pebbles bars that looked good (colorful) to her.  When the large man was finished, I took half a step back to make way for him.  As he turned, I took another full step back.  Then, I leaned back further, with Audio still in my arms, to give him space.  Then, as I started to step forward to the table, a woman slipped in front of me.  She asked if they had anything with peanut butter and chocolate.  I heard a voice reply, “We have caramels.  They are two for one.”  Then, the flag children said, “All these are gluten-free,” as she waved her hand across the table, again. 

I stepped up to the edge of the table and looked at the woman while she held her hand over her mouth and her eyes darted about the table.  I turned Audio toward a girl standing next to me, at the edge of the table.  Up to this point, the girl hadn’t said anything, but appeared to be one of the students behind the bake sale.   I made eye contact with her, and then turned to Audio and said, “You think those look good?”  Audio confirmed that she wanted the colorful ones, and I asked the girl for four.  As I watched her hand reach out and select our bars, another hand waved across them and I heard, “All these are gluten-free.”  The bars we got weren’t the smallest on the tray. But there were definitely bigger bars there to be had, if I’d been selecting.  I put the bars in Audio’s backpack, and we walked home. 

My wife got off work in time to pick Dee Dee up from her after school activity.  Between her varying quit time and traffic, it’s never a sure thing that she’ll make it to the school on time.  So, even when we think that my wife will be able to pick up Dee Dee, I still get Audio in and out of the bathroom, and partially dressed to walk over to the school to get her.  To date, neither of our girls has had to wait for us to pick them up from school or preschool.   

After they’d been home for a bit, I heard Dee Dee telling her mom something in a distressed voice about the bake sale.  I grabbed Audio’s backpack and joined them in time to see Dee Dee burst into tears.  I pulled the Fruity Pebbles bars out of Audio’s backpack and set them on a table. Then, I quickly realized that Dee Dee’s unhappiness was caused by something more than just not getting something from the bake sale.  I sat down and pulled Dee Dee onto my lap.  Her mom was kneeling on the floor in front of us.  It took a long time to piece it together.  But, over the next few minutes, between fits of crying and sniffling, we learned that Dee Dee had a series of misunderstandings at the end of the school day that had upset her.   

Dee Dee said that the teacher who collects and brings the students to their after-school programs took the students on a detour to the bake sale so that students who had money could buy something.  There was a table set up outside the front door of the school as well as the one by the parent pick-up location that Audio and I went to.  Dee Dee felt left out because it seemed that most of the other kids had money to buy something and she didn’t.   

She kept telling her mother and me that she had forgotten that the bake sale was going to be on this day.  We kept telling her that we knew about it, but never imagined the situation that she found herself in, so we hadn’t discussed it with her.  The information about the location of the bake sale was that there would be a table at the parent pick-up, and another by the Rec-Center.  The Rec-Center is where Audio went to preschool last year and is on the other side of the building from the front entrance of the school.  One can access the Rec-Center from the front entrance of the school, but the main entryway, with signage and double doors is on the opposite side of the building. 

If I’d known that a bake sale table would be located outside, in front of the building, and that the students would have had an opportunity to stop at it between the end of the day and the start of the after-school programs, I would have picked up Audio at the end of the school day and met Dee Dee there.  It is less than one hundred yards away from where Audio and I were.  And, as uncustomary as it is for me to carry money, I did on this day, and just for the bake sale.  It felt bad to think that I was close enough to help my daughter out but didn’t know I was needed. 

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only misunderstanding of the afternoon.  Somehow, while she was feeling bad about the bake sale, Dee Dee got turned around and followed the wrong group of kids and ended up in the Rec Plus room of the Rec Center, where kids hang out and wait for their parents to get off work.  I didn’t get a good explanation about what happened while she was in the Rec Plus room or how she made it to her Musical Theater program in the auditorium.  But, by this point, she seemed to be getting tired of talking about it and was getting more upset.  So, I didn’t ask for details. 

I did ask if Musical Theater went OK.  I didn’t.  What is usually one of the highlights of her week was the next chapter of her nightmare.  Apparently, a lot of the kids in the program had brought money for the bake sale.  The instructor told the kids that they couldn’t eat in the theater.  But, Dee Dee was still feeling left out and cried in front of the other kids.  Dee Dee’s mom asked her if anyone talked to her or comforted her and she said that the teacher who brought all the kids (with or without money) to the bake sale talked with her, but De Dee told us that she didn’t remember what the teacher said.   

Trying to talk about something positive that happened during the day, I asked how gym class had been.  Dee Dee likes gym. But, she told me that it didn’t go well because one kid on her relay team kept cheating, another kid cut in line in front of her, and she at one point got scared that she wouldn’t be able to get a chunk of rubber band out of her ear.  I asked if she put it in there herself, and she said that she had.  I asked if someone else had talked her into putting it in her ear and she said that she decided to do it on her own.  I asked if there were kids around her watching her do it and she said that there were.  So, we talked about that for a while.   

After Dee Dee stopped crying, we all ate some chili that I had started working on the previous day.  I had gone into the kitchen to make a sandwich and accidentally made chili and pickled jalapeños.  Both chili and pickled peppers are better on the second day.  We actually have quite a few meals at our house that take a couple days to make.  Anyway, we all had chili and then ate the Fruity Pebbles bars and called it a night.