Minnie Who?

Woebegone* child in in floral housecoat trudges toward check-in desk.
"Good morning, Hannah! What a nice backpack! Who's that on your backpack?" (It's Minnie Mouse.)
..........
.....................
"Minnie."
Heaves sigh. Begins trudge in direction of coloring pages.
"Now, hold on a minute, Hannah! I know Minnie has a last name! What's the rest of her name???"
Deeper sigh. Stops. Halfhearted glance back over her right shoulder.
"Nobody."
Great. Minnie Nobody. That's actually fantastic. I am so glad this new character name has arisen in result of Mr. Paul's jolly good morning greetings.
Last week we, as a strong and very vocal unit of forty, performed Queen's "We Are The Champions" and Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" to both the rage and delight of the parents. Delight due to joy in seeing their children passionately sweating and straining through the higher section of the "Champions" chorus while posing as victoriously as possible - fists held high/lying on the floor chewing their shoelace. I myself was moved. From my spot standing perched atop a folding chair where I was acting out all the necessary choreography along with the kids while simultaneously providing a truly horrible example of how to use furniture.
The aforementioned rage comes from the children now insisting upon having Gaga blaring in the car to and from all camp activities and probably to and from the pool, the grocery store, and as accompaniment for bath-time.
It was a smash.
This week: I've branched out. We're looking at a "Star Wars" theme, folks.
Note: Up until very recently, I'd not seen any of the "Star Wars" films, and this has only been slightly corrected. But I figured I knew enough now to successfully write a ten minute play on the subject for a slew of seven-year-olds.
Not so much sort of so.
I quickly toss off four group names for the campers to be sorted into this week. Easy, I think. So, Wookies - wait, that's not how to spell that, who knew -- Wookiees, Ewoks - oh, I love them, they are so cute. I have always wanted to be one for Halloween. And then there was that time Nick Aliff had a dream he was being chased through a forest by Ewok Audra and she was chattering at him irately and firing off arrows in the direction of his person from the treetops. I love that dream. So, Wookiees, Ewoks....hmm. Oh! Storm Troopers - I think those are the white plastic people who look like trash cans, and.....Ah! The Resistance. Great. Group names done.
Children FURIOUS. Storm Troopers are not so much the thing to be, as it turns out. Many of the children are not clear on what an Ewok is. Wookiees they are largely OK with, but the only positive aspect of being a member of the Resistance seems to be having your lunch bag table located closest to the check-in desk.
I would estimate that literally 70% of the children today are wearing the same "Star Wars" T-shirt. Based on the most recent movie. With that little two ball white critter with orange patches and that magical food where you put sand and water in an old Lean Cuisine container and poof! Come up with some dear and green puffy bread. That bread was, I think, my favorite part of that film. I wrote a story about it:
STAR WARS


Anyway- for craft today, we make light sabers out of pool noodles.**

Pool noodles and duct tape. So now, forty seven-year-olds are the proud new owners of personal pool noodle light sabers with which they will be expected to perform a piece of low intensity/high-quality performance art stage combat on this coming Friday at 2:30PM. If anyone's interested. Which you probably should be. Mr. Paul plans to conduct a unit on fencing this week. A fencing intensive. Right after the unit on How To Open Your Own Go-Gurt.
Musical selections for this week will include: "Intergalactic" by the Beastie Boys***, "Think" by Aretha Franklin, "I Have Confidence" from "The Sound of Music," and "We Are Family," by someone I can't remember right now,  but I've changed the "sisters" lyric to "friends here," so don't worry.
All this mostly means is that today, I encouraged a gymnasium full of children in "Star Wars" shirts to stop trying to sing on pitch and to make robot noises instead, and that Miss Heather got to conduct an open call for first grader impressions of Chewbacca.
As the above event is going on, I am beginning to think that the uvular trill is something one generally acquires later in life (unless someone has spent an inordinate amount of time watching "The Little Mermaid," and, having nailed down her Ariel impression, has moved on to impersonating Scuttle during "Kiss the Girl), when suddenly Joshua in his snazzy red and white striped shorts trots boldly up to the magic purple dot Mr. Paul has placed on the floor as a mark for this round of auditions and trills his uvula so violently I am surprised he didn't soil his shorts.
Surprised and impressed. I'm not privy to casting decisions on this matter, but I'm eager to see the cast list when it is posted in the morning.

*May be first recorded case of "Resting Woebegone Face."
**I did not know this prior, but cutting pool noodles in half with scissors is a really, really good time.
***Everything I know about this song I know because one summer Scott Wichmann and I were in a show together and we were going somewhere on 64 West with the Beastie Boys album blaring in my '99 Red Chevrolet Cavalier and he was explaining to me how during "The Baseball Game" number in "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown," the math doesn't add up re. how many runs would be needed to tie or win the game. He's right. It's in the narrative CB sings just before he gets distracted by the trashy ginger in the stands and blows the game for everyone. And once you see that he's right you feel like you have Sherlock Holmes-d the whole affair. And now I cannot think of either song without thinking of this piece of information. Which is one of those things I love about life.