is anyone out there???

Should I stay or should I go now...

I dropped Sarah, Heather and Nicholas off at AB college Honor Band this morning. They went to their various warm-up areas before their auditions and I went to tell them goodbye. Heather and Nicholas both had people they knew from school with them. I went into the auditorium where Sarah was warming up and she was the only one in there. I guess none of the other percussionists had arrived yet.

"Do you want me to wait in here with you until someone else comes?" I asked her. I wasn't sure if she would think it was better to be alone or have her mother sitting with her. "I don't care," she mumbled. I translated and my closest approximation was that she would love it if I stayed. I sat there pondering the big universal question: "Should I stay or should I go now...."

You see, I am not really good at figuring out teenagers when it comes to this kind of thing. For example, last week I went to the high school to talk to the principal. Unfortunately he was on lunch duty so I had to walk through the cafeteria to talk to him. I have found that teenagers don't like it when adults show them recognition in front of their friends, so I looked at the floor as I walked through the cafeteria. That way I wouldn't accidentally smile or wave at someone I knew. I repeated to myself, "I don't exist, I don't exist," over and over again as I made my way over to the principal.

I was surprised to hear, "Mrs. McKibben, hey Nick's mom," shouted by several kids. I looked up and soon found myself smiling, waving and getting high fives from several kids in the lunch room. "I DO EXIST," I thought proudly. By the time I had finished talking the principal, I was quite full of myself. But don't worry, I had to walk back through the hall on my way to my car and had enough glares of "I don't know you---you don't know me" to sufficiently knock my ego back down to size.

So, back to my dilemma. I waited in the auditorium with Sarah until another percussionist arrived. But I still wasn't sure if I should stay. Finally, I got up and told Sarah to call me after her audition. Did I make the right decision? Who knows? Maybe I should have stayed. I'll worry about it for the rest of the day, I'm sure. But if I'd stayed, I would have worried that I should have left...