COUNTDOWN

A couple of months ago, as we drove by the local elementary school, we saw that they had used plastic cups in red, white and blue to spell out the word COUNTDOWN, followed by a colon and then a number. (I wanted to take a picture of this for you all, to give you the full effect, but I can't get far enough away from it to fit the whole thing in the frame and still get a clear shot.)

At first I just assumed that they were counting down until the last day of school, but at some point, enough of my math skills were in the same room for me to figure out that we were going to hit zero way before the end of the schoolyear. It was around this time Pukka noted that they seemed to be counting down to our anniversary. the math on this worked out correctly, but somehow I doubted the little ones cared much about commemerating our marriage. This led to much idle speculation about what master plan the third grade set had for taking over the world. Finally, last week, my curiousity got the best of me, so I emailed the school secretary:

To: nice elementary school secretary lady
From: nice, non-threatening, child-loving, but not in a creepy way, me
re: Countdown to what?

Every day, my husband and I drive by your school on our way to and from work, and we've been spending the last couple of months speculating about what you're counting down to. I found the school's website this afternoon and was hoping I'd find an answer there, but couldn't locate one. Maybe you could help us out? We're hoping it's not anything drastic since we only have a few days left! :)

Thanks!

my nice and oh so professional sig that was recently dictated to me by the corporate empire that will soon be paying our mortgage

The next day I got this reply from the school's webmaster:

To: the lady asking the weird questions of the school secretary
From: really nice webmaster guy
re: Countdown

Ms. Turner,

Thank you for your recent correspondence. Thanks for looking up the
website, and for inquiring about the countdown.

On Saturday, April 30, our school will celebrate a new piece of playground
equipment. Some day, when you drive by, you might notice a large piece of
equipment for the kids to climb on.

Thanks for your interest!

sig of the really nice webmaster guy

Isn't that cool? So now we all know. No littles bent on world domination, just a cool new addition to the playground.