When Kelsey and Caleb Grimm sat down at their 5-year-old’s preschool graduation, they knew that the kids would likely sing a song and the teachers would probably talk about what the students learned throughout the year.
What they didn’t realize was that the graduates were expected to announce their career goals to the audience.
In a room full of teachers, relatives and friends, rising kindergartener Collins Grimm said in a confident voice, “When I grow up, I want to be a wicked witch.”
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“When I tell you that I was crawling under the seats when she said that. Oh my word!” Kelsey tells TODAY.com. “I felt like I owed that entire room an explanation for what she meant. We’re not over here doing weird witchcraft or anything. She just loves the ‘Wicked’ movie. That’s what it boils down to.”
Kelsey posted the video of the moment on Instagram on May 17 and in four days, it has already received over 17 million views.
After Collins spoke, “the whole room erupted. Everybody died laughing,” recalls Kelsey. “Her teachers could barely hold it together. And then the director of the preschool kind of like gathered herself after everyone stopped laughing, and she was like, ‘Well, that made my entire night.'”
Kelsey and Caleb knew there might be an issue when they sat down at graduation and heard from another family that the ceremony would include a section on career aspirations.
“I was like, ‘Oh, no. I don’t know what Collins is going to say,'” Kelsey laughs. “I told my husband, ‘She’s going to say one of two things: She’s either going to say a princess or she’s going to say a witch.'”
As it turns out, Collins had said at career day a few months prior that she wanted to be a witch. The teachers told her mother at the time, and Kelsey asked Collins to explain what she meant.
“She’s like, ‘Yeah, I want to be Elphaba or Glinda.’ And I was like, ‘OK, that tracks,'” Kelsey shares. Collins only added the “wicked” part at the graduation ceremony.
Kelsey and Caleb are recording artists living in Nashville, Tennessee, and Kelsey is a lifelong fan of the Broadway musical. She started playing the movie soundtrack around the kids even before the movie was released. Kelsey didn’t take Collins to the movie theater because she worried that it might be a little too scary.
But when the film was finally available to stream at home, Collins begged to watch.
“I was like, ‘You know what baby, it’s three hours long. I guess we can start it and just see how far we get,'” Kelsey explains.
“And if that child didn’t sit there for three hours and watch that entire movie start to finish, belting out every song that she knew … I was absolutely floored.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
