… or maybe not so much.

This year, with two kids now in school, I ended up volunteering for shifts at two classroom “booths.” I didn’t, however, bother to check on what, exactly, I would be doing.

So imagine my chagrin when I learned that this year’s kindergarten booth offered … face painting.

I’m the girl who hot-glue-gunned her hair to a Christmas ornament when I decided to get crafty one holiday season. I figured paint plus Cathy plus small children was an equation destined for certain disaster.

For this reason, I turned up early last night so that I could watch the first shift of face painters in action. You can imagine my relief when I found that one table was a center for Face Painting Dummies. All you had to do was paint a cubed design, press it against a child’s cheek, and voila … a perfect little flower, heart or Halloween portrait presented itself without any bumbling interference from me.

The other table was manned by the talented free-style crew. So when a cute little witch or ghoul asked for something complicated, I simply pointed them to the women wielding brushes.

From face painting, I headed to the Moon Bounce, where I supervised leaping children. My duties consisted of taking tickets and yelling, “Hey, no roughhousing in there!” or “Do NOT jump near the little ones!” There was only one casualty, one of my sweet little Girl Scouts, who ended up a victim of two overly rambunctious boys. Thankfully, a few hugs seemed to take care of the bumped nose.

We ended the night by having dinner with a mom friend and her daughter, best friend to my Tootie.

The waitress, seemingly amused by are fervent requests for a beer, a margarita and a vodka tonic, laughed when we offered a two-word explanation:

“Fall carnival.”

Despite the chaos, it was a lot of fun and the kids had a fabulous time. The E-man, in fact, is still wearing his skeleton suit. He has thus far squashed any attempts to remove it. I just hope it holds up until Halloween.