T was Coachie for the Day at school last Wednesday!

T gets his name-tag and whistle before picking up duties on the playground as Coachie for the Day at school.

How did this happen, you ask? It wasn’t an honor he won nor was it a title bestowed upon him or anything of that sort. It all happened because his mom (AKA me) is a sucker for silent auction rumors. Please allow me to explain.

So we had this silent auction at school leading up to our larger Spring Fundraising event in April. When I asked T if there was anything among the 40 or so prizes laid out along the halls at school that he liked more than another, his response was that he would LOVE to be “Coachie for the Day.” That was it.

Hmm… Thinking that might not be the least affordable option of the lot, meaning, an extremely popular item and likely to entice a huge bidding war, I asked around of some other moms who’d been here-done this before. They told me that my hunch was correct, that this prize normally runs at a level that I wasn’t comfortable bidding for outright. OK, Great! And since this was only Tuesday of the week-long auction (prizes awarded Friday 3 p.m.), I bid a number I would be OK with paying if said bidding war never occurred but knowing full-well that I’d likely be way outbid. A win-win in my case since T saw me put in the bid but I explained to him that it wasn’t likely he’d be the winner, and he was OK with all of it. He was just thrilled that we entered “the contest.”

Would you listen to this playground monitor? I dunno….

Well, turns out the rumors were wrong about everything. There was no bidding war. There wasn’t even another bid following mine. So T got to be Coachie for the Day, I got to give the school a modest donation, and I learned not to believe silent auction rumors at school or otherwise. Lessons learned, and a lucky T as a result. I really couldn’t be happier for him.

T with his classmate before having lunch in the office.

T, his buddy, and Mrs. H. (AKA, the real Coachie).

I didn’t get a lot of photos of T’s workday as Coachie since this was an ongoing, in-and-out-of-class-all-day event for him, but I am grateful for the few I did snap, which included his lunch break in the office with another friend of his choosing.

Thanks again to Mrs. H for giving T a very memorable day out on the playground as Coachie for the Day! Maybe we’ll even do it again Spring 2015… if we’re lucky.