The Dance Recital

If you have children of the female persuasion, there will come a time where your wife will approach you and say, "Why aren't you wearing pants?"......wait, that's not what I was thinking of....although, as you age, you might get asked that question.  No, what your wife will say is that your daughter wants to take "dance".  No series of words, other than "I am late" (from your wife) or "Do you remember where I parked the car?" (from one of your children) strikes such fear in the heart of a Dad.  For you see, if your daughter takes dance, she must participate in the dreaded "Dance Recital"  To understand this fear, we must define what "Dance Recital" is:

Mom's Definition:  Cute little girls showing off the adorable routines they have learned over the last year.
Dad's Definition:  My daughter is dressed like a tiny little street walker.
Dance Recitals are held in large sports arenas, attended by moms and grandmothers who will kill you if you take their seat, and typically last 10 to 12 hours.

If you have NOT experienced such an event, let me walk you through this fun time.

Your daughter will have 'dance practice' roughly 1,356,238 times between August and May of any given year.  Because the people who teach dance are space aliens without real jobs, these practices are scheduled at very convenient times like 4:30 to 6:11pm on Mon/Tue, 5:06 to 7:36 on Wed/Thur, 4:00 to 'whenever' on Fridays, and 6:00am to 7:00am on Saturday.  Your daughter cannot miss a practice because if she does she will not know at what point during the 'routine' to run head first into the girl to her left while spinning out of control.

After each practice, the thoughtful alien teacher will say something like "Smotherina is doing better, when she falls down she doesn't hit her head on the floor anymore, and the other girls have learned not to step on her"  As a parent, you are supposed to praise the child for this feat.  They get 'atta girl' for falling down.  I do the same thing after a bottle of Merlot and I get thrown out of the restaurant.  So you praise them for falling, praise them for kicking the girl next to them, praise them for spinning out of control to the point they throw up, all in the hope they will "get the routine down" before the Recital. 

Sometime in April, a note will arrive stapled to your daughter's dance bag.  Oh yea, they have 'dance bags'.  At the reasonable cost of $6,000 you can own a custom made dance bag.  My daughter's dance bag is capable of holding 4 pairs of tights, 3 pairs of shorts, 3 t-shirts (festooned with colorful sayings like "we're dance-a-holics"), 2 undershirts, 4 pairs of socks, tap shoes, ballet shoes, jazz shoes, hair bands, hair clips, a hairbrush, several granola bars, several juice boxes, six geese-a-laying, seven swans-a-swimming, and a box of tissue.   The note says:

KrippleKick Studios Invites You to Our Annual Recital

"Stop, Drop, and Roll" 

June 3rd from 8:00am to Midnight.

Your child (insert name) will be participating in 112 routines, each lasting about 2 minutes.
Our costumes have been ordered.  The deposit required is $50 - this due tomorrow. 
The balance on the costumes of $6,800 is due the day after tomorrow.

So, after selling a few organs you pay the fee and the costumes arrive.  Then there are the photographs.  These take place a couple of weeks before the recital in order for parents to have time to repair the costumes destroyed while taking pictures.  Beginning at 5:00am, rabid mothers bring their daughters to the studio in the back of a semi-trailer packed to the hilt with rouge, blush, hair spray, hair bows, eye liner, lipstick, baby powder, staple guns, hot glue guns, double sided tape, single sided tape, duct tape, allen wrenches, bobby pins, hair clips, industrial blow dryers (that, if properly aimed, could allow the Israelites to walk across the Red Sea again),  hair straighteners, hair curlers, and snacks.  After 11 hours of "prepping", the child will stand in front of the camera for 2.5 seconds, and close her eyes at the exact moment her photo is taken.  "Next" the photographer will shout...."TAKE IT AGAIN" the rabid mom will screech. 

After several attempts the photos are taken, the costume is removed because it needs washing after your child spilled Yoo-Hoo on it, and Mom and daughter head for home.  Mom then waits for the photo's to be posted on a website.  Mom pulls up the website and then shows Dad.  Your child is dressed in one of the thousands of  'costumes' you have purchased.

The actual photo looks like this:

A Dad looks at the outfit and sees this:

"How could you dress her like that?"   he will say angrily
"Who chose that costume?  What's the name of the routine....'Street Walking?'"
"You're not ordering those, what the hell is wrong with that alien teacher?"
"It's cute" the wife will say. "What's wrong with the outfit....it's a dance outfit.  There's nothing wrong with it.  Good Grief, you are over-reacting"

After a few minutes, my wife agrees not to buy any of those particular shots...except for one copy because it is my daughter's favorite.  We agree to purchase some of a different pose, for which we will pay $1100, plus another $500 to publish it in the Recital "Program".  There's another thing....the "Program".  200 pages of little girls dressed "all cute" with notes that say:

"Way to Go Lumberina!  You didn't land in the hospital once this year!"  Love, Mom and Dad
"Great Dancin' my Dancin Girl"  Love Mom, Dad, PimplePa, Gramplepus, ZantieAuntie, and the Dog
"We're proud of our Ballerina!  Keep Chasing your Dreams....God knows we don't have any anymore"

Recital day arrives!  The show begins and somewhere in that group of children on stage is your daughter, but you can't find her.  Your wife is sitting on Row 3, she is stationed up front and ready with a loaded 18 wheeler full of costumes and accessories waiting to pounce backstage when the current routine ends so she can prepare your daughter for the next routine. However, because you did not want to arrive at the Recital 8 hours before the show started you cannot sit with your wife.   No, as a Dad you sit a little further back, like in the next state.  So you make use of powerful camera lenses to watch carefully as the various groups of small children come out on stage and:

Walk around aimlessly
Fall down at random
Get some serious wedgies corrected
Spend some quality time picking their nose

You eventually locate your daughter and.....here is where the "rabid recital mom syndrome" rubs off on you....you video her doing those things!  Why do you video?  You respond with "because she is doing them so much better than the other girls". 
**I have to come clean and admit that once, during my daughter's recital, I took video of someone who I thought was my daughter, but was not.  They were all dressed in yellow outfits with black hats.  "How the hell could I tell the difference? They all look like 4 year old short banana's" was my only defense.  "Maybe by recognizing your own daughter" was my older kids response.  "Remind us never to go in a crowd with you Dad."

So, after several days and hundreds of routines, the recital ends and we get to go home and have a nice meal while continuing to heap praise on our daughter ("you got that wedgie out first try! good job!) until she gets bored and runs off to play on the Wii.  My wife will spend endless hours looking at the Program, looking at the costumes, carefully packing up the myriad of accessories (hats, bows, gloves, glasses, bracelets, goggles, flippers, roman candles, and necklaces)....and then we get to start the whole thing over again....at the NEXT AGE LEVEL.  Which will require more practice time because at this age "we try not to have them fall down as much."

People often times ask me why I drink.