apparently

I just went to the first summer playgroup at my son's upcoming pre-school. To compare it to two things I have absolutely no experience with, it seemed sort of like a combination between speed dating, "Hi, I'm Chris, that giant laughing boy is mine, where do you live? Whoops, gotta go chase him..." and an arranged marriage, "So, I guess I'll be seeing a lot of you."

The excitement of meeting these parents and children that we'll know so well in a year (this school is a cooperative school, one paid teacher and three parents in each class room, so the cooping parent really knows all the kids and the other cooping parents) was diluted by the presence of an active back-hoe operation in the park we were at, and the presence of a number of neighborhood friends that my son played with in lieu of the new people for the first 40 minutes or so. Despite the back-hoe and the old friends, my son played with a few of the new people, and said a big jolly good-bye to almost everyone when they were leaving. All the other parents seemed like they will be good people to co-op with.

My son did of course hit one child, and then burst into shrieks when told not to do that by the other parent, but they then seemed to reconcile as well as can be expected. The other child did not fearfully avoid my son after the incident, much to my relief. My son fell asleep in about 12 minutes of the nap drive (since the beginning of first grade, he only falls asleep for a nap by driving around, sigh). All in all an auspicious beginning to our three year journey of pre-school.