What's important in your life??

The Grimsley High School swim team holds their awards dinner at Tex & Shirley's every year. At least, they have for the last five or six years. This year, they scheduled it for Sunday, March 4. They have always met at 5:00 PM so that we have room to accommodate the 70 or 80 folks that show up for this event.

This year I got a phone call from the student in charge about a week before the dinner. She asked if they could change the time to 6:30 PM. I explained to her that the only reason that we were able to accommodate a crowd of that size was that at 5:00 PM we weren't busy. At 6:30, they would cause problems with seating our regular Sunday evening customers. She said that 5:00 would be OK and hung up. On Thursday afternoon I was visited by one of the parents who asked if we could change the start time to 6:30 PM. I gave her the same explanation and pointed out that they had always met at 5:00. She explained that several parents were not going to come if it was at 5:00 because it conflicted with the UNC-Duke basketball game on TV. She asked if my regular customers would be there with UNC-Duke on TV. I assured her that not everyone would be watching the game. I finally ended up agreeing to move it to 6:00 for this year. We still had about 20% fewer people attend than in past years.

Frankly, I am stunned by parents who tell their children that they are going to watch a basketball game on TV rather than go see their child receive an award. Don't they have a VCR? Is a game on TV more important than celebrating the accomplishments of your children? What's important in your life??