Wacky Week

People are freaking out about Wacky Week, a yearly event at a school in my newly adopted home state of Wisconsin, where kids voted to dress up as the opposite sex or as a senior citizen. Those having fits about this suggest it’s a public school effort to promote cross-dressing.

Given the propensity of public schools to promote so-called “alternative lifestyles” in recent years, I can see where parents would be suspicious at first. But it appears that this was the kids’ choice. Besides, if the school really was promoting cross-dressing, I doubt the principal would have said this:

"I can assure you we will not be having this day (again).”

Instead, she would have been quoted as saying something like, “This was simply an exercise in diversity,” while straightening the tie she wore with a pin-striped suit.

I’m not defending Wacky Week here. I don’t see how dressing silly for a week helps anyone study harder, and as someone with one of those ends-in-zero birthdays coming in a few months, (ahem), I don’t see the humor in dressing like a senior citizen…..what does that mean anyway, wearing Depends under a housedress or chest-high pants?

Regardless, it does bring back a memory from when my older children were little. They were probably four and five years old when they came running down the stairs one afternoon, giggling and calling for me. I was in the kitchen making dinner when they burst in. They had switched clothes. My daughter could barely fit into her little brother’s clothes, and hers were way too big on him. I thought they looked pretty funny and we all had a good laugh.

But then Daddy came home, and he was not amused. He told them to go change back into their regular clothes, and he gave me a look when I whispered that I thought it was funny.

Now, this was nearly 20 years ago, before cross-dressing changed categories from mental illness to celebrity fad. Looking back, I can see why he wasn’t happy about it. But they were so young at the time that I knew they didn’t mean anything by it. In fact, the thought of it brings a smile to my face because I can still hear their giggles in my memory. They’re now in their mid-twenties, our son is five inches taller than his older sister, and neither of them would be caught dead in the other’s clothes, lol.