MARK MY WORD: PARENTS EXPERIENCE FUN AND GAMES OF PLAY DAY

I have a college degree. I've talked to governors and even a spark-plug collector.

But nothing could have prepared me for Play Day '98.

If you're a student at Alma Schrader Elementary School, nothing compares to Play Day.

Play Day has all the feel of a carnival but without the cotton candy.

As parents of a kindergartner, Play Day was something new to us.

We didn't know what to expect and neither did our 6-year-old daughter, Becca.

I knew it was a big deal when I arrived at school around 10:30 a.m. on Friday and had to settle for on-street parking blocks from the school.

When you take 500 kids and add in the parents, you've got the makings of a major crowd.

After eating two sandwiches in the school gym (Becca wasn't hungry), she and I headed outside for some fun and games.

It didn't take long before she had one cheek painted with a yellow, smiley face and her hair sprayed pink.

The face-painting and hair-spraying booths were definite hits with the younger set. Many of the boys got their faces painted and their hair sprayed green.

There's nothing like pink hair to make you feel good about yourself.

Becca visited a number of game booths where the winning was easy. Actually, every participant could count on winning a bunch of trinkets.

The children carried around plastic bags filled with their new treasures.

Becca loved the bean-bag toss. The object was to throw bean bags through the open mouth of the cardboard clown.

I spent a lot of time hanging out with the clown because I had signed up to work the game.

Joni volunteered her time too, etching names and initials on bracelets and necklaces for the kids at the jewelry booth.

The bean-bag toss proved to be a winner with the kids, who loved pitching the bags through the mouth.

The same kids came back again and again for the opportunity to win everything from crayon key chains to smiley-face rings.

I spent over an hour manning the game. The wind blew down the cardboard clown several times and threatened to do so many more times.

I constantly had to reposition the cardboard and prop it up against folding chairs.

Over and over again, Becca helped me retrieve the bean bags from behind the clown face.

She also helped hand out the prizes.

Eventually, she tired of that and moved on to other games.

But then my friend, Bill, showed up to help out. He was adept at grabbing the bean bags out of midair as they reached the clown's mouth.

This proved to be a vast improvement to the game. You can only watch so many bean-bag tosses before your mind starts to wander to the pick-a-numbered-duck-and-win-a-prize booth.

There were plenty of races run too. Becca's kindergarten class came in second.

But this wasn't the Olympics and she and her classmates didn't seem to mind. For them, the fun was in the running.

Becca found time to buy stuff from the "store" set up in the school gym.

The kids started out with some paper money. But pretty soon, parents were spending real dollars to buy more paper money so their kids could purchase more stuff.

Becca couldn't have been happier.

Life is good when you can get your hair colored, toss a few bean bags and come home from school with a bag full of trinkets.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.