1. Blowing up balloons the night before graduation in a last-ditch effort to make up for all the years I did zero volunteering at school. I got assigned to balloon detail with two sixth-grade girls and their grandmothers, one of whom was a salty old sailor who maybe would have preferred a nice cocktail somewhere to blowing up balloons with me. At one point she chided the girls for not blowing up their balloons to the full extent of their potential. One of them had a small, squishy balloon that she was batting around in lieu of developing a work ethic and Salty Gran looked at it and said, "You need to blow harder, that ballon's retarded." I was in some sort of ballsy mood and said to her, "We don't say retarded any more, we say developmentally challenged," and Salty Gran raised her eyebrow at me and said, "Oh, really?" I doubt I opened her eyes to the linguistic nuances of our time, but it did give me some insight into the woman I'm going to be in a couple of decades when some smart-ass tells me, "Oh, we don't call them robots anymore, we call them extra-humanoid-Americans," and I'll be like, "Okay, well, your extra-humanoid-American needs to pump my hydro-gas a little faster, I am on my way to get my head frozen and the cryolab does not reschedule missed appointments."

2. The fifth grader who was standing at the door to the gym handing out travel packs of tissues, and who looked at my all-set-to-start-sniveling face and said, "Do you maybe want two?"

3. Unsuccessfully repressing my sobs while Mr. Reed told everyone how loyal my son was, and how he told the truth instead of just saying nice things to make people like him, and how much he loved his family, and how his teachers had to peel him off my leg every morning in pre-kindergarten.

4. Delicious cake at ten in the morning.

5. Having one of Jackson's classmates, a really wonderful girl who got up at 5:45 to get her makeup on (her makeup was perfect), come up to me as I was leaving and say, "I like your tights!" It was chilly and I was wearing mustard-colored tights with red shoes and other clothes, and I said, "Thanks! I got them at Macy's, they're HUE." She smiled politely, so I continued, "H-U-E is the brand," as she continued to give me a polite, fixed smile, so I went on, "They're great, they have a lot of colors, although these are like five years old," and then I realized that despite her ongoing smile, the light behind her eyes had gone out so I said, "Okay, then! Congratulations!" Apparently she didn't expect me to start telling her every single thing I could think of about my tights? I don't know how girls talk to each other, it's an ongoing problem for me and I imagine things are just going to get weirder as we move on into high school and Jackson starts warning people before they meet me: "Just so you know, my mom is going to take everything you say as an opportunity to treat you like a library patron who doesn't understand Google."