Last night was Parent's Night at the Emerald City.  We were supposed to all take our children down to the basement, where they would be individually caged while we parents heard about the Emerald City's recent state accredidation.

I'm kidding.  But that would've been safer.

I took the little angel down and was met with chaos.  At the time I went down, there were about twenty children ranging in age from the little angel (youngest) to five boys looking to be around seven or eight years old.  The basement is cement.  There was one set of blocks, two decrepit, pointy metal basketball hoops, five balls, some bowling pins, two portable climbing playsets barely centered on gymnastics mats and a set of yarn blocks.  For what ended up to be more than 40 children.  Damn.

Some of the other mother's in the little angel's class stood next to me, their mouths agape.  There was one adult supervising the din, accompanied by a staff of fifth grade girls.  I looked at J's mother.  She looked at me.  We knew there was no way that one woman was going to be able to watch the 82nd and Airborne Battalion of the Children's Army.  NO WAY.

I told J and D's mothers that I would stay down in the basement, since my beloved was already upstairs, happily listening to an extended advertisement for waddler gymnastics.  The waddler gymnastics people were supposed to be immediately coming downstairs after their little talk to set up mats on which the children would play.  The children, who by the time they got downstairs, would have worked themselves into a rapid lather from 37 minutes of practically unsupervised running and throwing of balls at each other.

Within ten minutes, little P. had fallen down on the cement.  His brother looked soulfully on. 

"Do you think he's really hurt?" I asked S., trying to comfort a weeping P.  There was no blood or bruising, but he was obviously terrified.  I knew their mother was one like me who would freak out to know her child was suffering in the jungles of 'Nam while she listened to a boring speech upstairs.  I decided if he didn't stop crying in ten minutes, I would go get her.  He did not.  I decided to venture upstairs.  I debated for about .5 seconds whether or not to leave the little angel undefended.  Of course, I took her with me.  P's mother said she's had a feeling and whisked P off to also listen to the lectures.  I explained to the angel that we'd lost 1/4 of our company and had to soldier on.  I told her to be brave.

"Down!" she cried.  She is so brave.

We went back downstairs, and she ran off to play with a small girl of about two who had not stopped crying for over a half hour.  The one adult supervisor decided to take her upstairs, leaving me and a terrified-looking teenage girl to supervise ALL THESE CHILDREN.  The boy scouts were playing a heated game of dodgeball in the corner, heaving the red rubber ball with the Sega-induced force only a young boy can muster.  I watched helplessly as little D. toddled into the middle of the crossfire.  Thankfully, he was not hit.

I walked over to the battlezone, looked around, gathered my parently righteous indignation and yelled, "HEY!" at the top of my authoritarian range.

The boys paused for a second and looked at me.  They were really good boys, they were just stuck in a church basement with nothing to do.  I pointed at D. and J., who had both now wandered into the middle of the danger zone.

"These little boys have no business being over here with you, but I can't come and get them with you throwing the balls that hard.  Do you understand what will happen to you if you hurt these little boys?"

They looked at me, terrified, and ran away.  I hadn't intended to break up their game, just remove the FRICKIN' TODDLERS from the fray.  They didn't give me the chance to explain what would happen to them, which was not bodily injury. I must look tough or something.  I can just imagine the conversations they had at home later.

"Then this blond lady in glasses and cheap thongs came up and told us she'd kick our asses if we hit the toddlers, which we were totally not trying to do.  Can you please have her fingers cut off?"

"No, Billy, go to bed."

Hopefully I'll never see them again.

I led J. and D. back over to a safer area of the din.  By then I was sweating like a sow in summertime.  Children whizzed by me, periodically falling on the cement. The older ones laughed and picked themselves up, but the younger ones, completely overwhelmed by the noise and action, were quickly getting overstimulated.  J. had his thumb in his mouth and was making the sign for milk, only I don't know sign language and didn't know that until his mother showed it to me later.  Oh, well, that's what you get for leaving your kid with an American.

At this point, the little angel showed me a rusty washer she had picked up off the ground and was about to put in her mouth. I put it in my pocket, thinking if I set it down anywhere in this crazy room, some other kid would soon swallow it.  I looked at my watch.  7:30.

The gymnastics people finally got set up by 7:45 (this hell was to continue until 8).  They started with the oldest kids, leaving the younger ones with no definition for self-control to wiggle and try to wander onto the mats while the older ones bounced and kicked.  One of them pointed to the cones as the little angel tried to get on the delicious-looking mat.  "Stay behind the cones, honey," she said.

STAY BEHIND THE CONES?  Does she realize the little angel doesn't even know what a cone is?  Good grief.  By this point, though, the din seemed to be controlled, and I decided to let someone else watch my child while I tried to figure out who in the HELL had that stinky diaper going on. It was some little person near me, and I had almost succombed to the smell.

Of course, there were no diapers anywhere, so there wasn't much I could do about it.  Still, I had to know.

At 8, my beloved finally came back down.  "Why didn't you come up?" he asked.  "Let's go."

I looked around at D. and J. surrounded by roiling children approaching their bedtimes and starting to whine.  "Let's take these two with us," I said. "I can't leave them here in the jungle."

So we carried the boys upstairs and handed them to their mothers, who had NO IDEA what they had just been through. I don't know that I'll tell them.  But I had to tell someone.

That was the longest hour of my life.