Wasn't the dog named Brandon or maybe it was Comet?

Today, I was a little late in dropping Bridget off at "school" her part-time daycare not far from our house. Tim had to go out of town so the dirty deed was left to me again. I try and get out of this drop-off thing if at all possible simply because it's so miserable. When Tim takes her I have a happy image in my head all day of her walking happily out the door, backpack in tow, waving, giving kisses and saying "bye bye". But when I take her I never know which Bridget I'm going to get. There's the "oh i'm so happy to see all my friends and go play - mommy who?" Bridget or the "why on god's green earth would you make me come to this forsaken place where they torture me all day long with song singing, artwork making and interactive play with my peers" Bridget. It's a toss up and as far as I can tell there is no predictor of which one you're going to get. Lately, it's been a little more of the torturous variety than mommy who variety. So, I prepared myself for the worse this morning. I was going to be confident, strong and not give into what was sure to be a veritable melt-down with the weaker of the two parents doing the drop off.

People, I was in control. Then I opened the door.

This is "young children's" week at school (??) and they've been doing activities all week to celebrate the younger ones. So today they brought in a story teller for Bridget's room and because I was so late, she was already mid-telling of some monkey/fairy story. Cute, right? WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

She was absolutely terrifying and she scared the hell out of...... me. She was straight out of a 1984 Punky Brewster episode - you know like the really bad ones when Punky was all "expressing" herself. I'm not exaggerating here friends, the "story teller" was a (not that this matters, but it does add to the visual) very overweight 65 year-old Punky Brewster with wings! dressed in multiple layers of bright pink, yellow, purple, and plaid pattern clothes, mismatched socks and shoes, a stuffed monkey and some god-awful hat that was luckily still "hidden" behind her back for what I can only assume was to be used in a future climatic element of the monkey fairy story.

I wanted to run out the door screaming. I quickly looked at Bridget to see her reaction and the only way I can describe it is - purely mesmerized. She was taking it all in, trying to figure out what was going on. Then I looked at the other kids, and they all were fixated on Punky, too, but not in a bad way, in a happy, clap my hands jump up and down when she tells me sort of way. Bridget actually reached out for Miss Emily to go sit on the ground and get a closer look.

Wait! No tears, no heartbreaking reaching for me as I try and kiss her goodbye - in fact, there was not even a kiss goodbye or a wave - she was just off - sitting down with her friends, and actually clapping a little as I walked out the door - not caring for a second that I was leaving.

Can you believe that? All that preparation in my head, all that stress and my daughter liked scary Punky over mommy. I almost felt a little sad or something - she just didn't care about me at all. I should have been happy that it was so smooth - but again - SCARY PUNKY?! At the very least, I was relieved to get the hell out of there before that hat went on.