I Appreciate You...Have a door.

I worked this weekend and this morning a teacher appreciation door (2 actually) for the kids' school. And I wondered, "How did I get roped into this?" No. That's not really accurate. I chose to do this. A friend asked me and I agreed. And when I was asked which child's teacher I would like to do, I said, "Both." I'm not feeling sorry for myself that I am doing this. I guess the emotion I'm really feeling is...conflicted. Yes, I feel conflicted about decorating these doors.

Every spring the PTO or some other parent group organizes parents to decorate their kids' teacher's door with some sort of a thank you message. They are generally very colorful and kid-friendly, and sometimes involve the gift of candy. You know, like "We love Mrs. So&so to Pieces!" on a paper covered with packages of Reese's Pieces. Anyway, I have gone through 7 years of having kids in school without having to do one of these doors. I guess it was my turn. I kind of enjoy the creative process of coming up with ideas. I don't mind the work of putting the actual paper decorations together. And I certainly don't mind the idea of thanking teachers for their patience and hard work on behalf of my children. The conflict comes about thus:

A. I prefer a heartfelt word of thanks to a public display of gratitude. Moreover, I personally do not enjoy cutesy things. It's kind of hard to impress me with a construction of butcher paper, tape, and pseudo-clever sayings (e.g. We're not "lion" we love you!!), so I think I would not appreciate the decorated door, even if I felt the gratitude behind it was sincere. It is kind of hard to do for someone else what I myself would not enjoy. Not impossible, though, because I understand that different people enjoy different things, so perhaps this type of gesture would be appreciated by the recipient teacher. If I knew it would, then I would have no problem doing it. So, aside from being best friends with the teacher and understanding their taste, how would I guess whether he/she would like such a thing? Well, I could ask the teacher I'm married to. Thus arises my second reason for internal conflict:

B. My husband, the aforementioned teacher, hates these kind of obligatory, public gestures of thanks. He thinks they are neither genuine nor sincere, since people are "assigned" to do them and every teacher gets one, regardless of their job performance. He gets a paycheck for teaching the children and doing his best every day, and for him, that is enough thanks. We don't decorate the trash cans once a year to thank the garbage collectors, nor do we decorate the water meter for the meter readers, and so forth. We do celebrate Secretaries' Day. Pardon me, I mean Administrative Assistants Day, among other professional's days. Why should some professions get recognized and others not? Some might say we should decorate the trash cans and water meters and whatever other representative items for whatever other professions. It would just be so easy for that type of thing to get ridiculously out of hand. My husband would say we should do the opposite and let the paycheck be thanks enough for the job done. I tend to agree with him.

But here I am, decorating 2 doors for Teacher Appreciation Week at our elementary school. I will follow through on my promise to do so, and I will do a good job. And if asked to do it again, I will probably say yes, because I empathize with the fellow parent whose assignment it is to find decorators. But I probably won't really enjoy it. Kind of sad.