Yesterday both of my daughters performed in the annual dance recital. Bronte, my 6 year old, only had to dance in one recital but Brenna had to dance in two. The first recital was at 4:00 and the second at 7:00. Since both the girls were dancing in the 4:00 recital, that was the one I actually bought a ticket for and watched from the audience. (For those of you that are not familiar with the phenomenon that is little-girls-dance-studio...let me fill you in. The classes run about $12 an hour. Bronte only takes one hour a week, but Brenna takes 4. Then there are the shoes which are anywhere from $20-$40. Bronte needs three different pairs and Brenna needs four. Then there are the recital costumes. They run about $70-$80. Bronte needed one. Brenna needed five! Brenna also needed a $20 fake hairpiece that all the girls were going to add to their perfect ballerina buns. Well, Brenna's hair is so thick and beautiful that she didn't need the fake hair, but we bought it anyway because it was part of the costume. Then there are tights which are somewhere around $15. Okay, so after you get all this shit you start to really look forward to seeing the kids all dressed up for the recital, right? That's when the dance studio screws you again.
It's not enough that we bought shoes and tights and costumes and lessons to the tune of hundreds and hundred of dollars. NOOOOO. The studio asks you to just bend over a little farther so that they can charge you $9 a ticket to see your little princess dance. Yikes! After all that screwing I was hoping for a little cuddle and a cigarette, but NOOOO! If you show up at the recital without flowers for your dancing angel you look like a total ass. Kindly enough, the studio helps you avoid the disappointed look on your prima ballerina's face when you FORGOT to bring flowers by selling them in the lobby of the auditorium. $3 for a damn carnation with some baby's breath. The bitch of it is...you still look like an ass because everyone knows that you were too stupid and unconcerned about your darling dancer to actually go to the florist and buy some really, really special flowers. NOOOO. You bought your cheap-ass flowers in the damn lobby. And you call yourself a mother...)
Anyway, my kids have an entourage of people who all decided to pony up the cash to see them dance. My mother and father, my mother-in-law, me and Tony, and three of my friends and their children. Because the seating was unassigned, I ran into the auditorium and draped an orange feather boa across an entire row of seats. Yes, it was quite a long feather boa and I was lucky I had it with me. You know why I had an extra long feather boa with me? Because I had to leave the dance recital and go straight to my job as a stripper so I could pay for all the damn dance lessons. (That's a way better explanation than the real one. I'm going to stick with it.)
Anyway, the recital was so fun to watch. It was even funner because I was sitting between two of my very favorite people...my Italian friend "H" and my quiet friend "S".
Well, H used to be a dancer so she had lots to say during the dancing. Let me add here that H is completely incapable of whispering so everything she said was heard by all the people sitting around us. That so completely doesn't bother me, but it might have been distracting to the people in front of us, especially when H started singing "Mambo Italiano" quite boisterously during the 7 year olds routine. She laughed really loudly when the little kids danced and were so stinking cute you just couldn't help but laugh. She screamed out my kids names during the applause after they were done dancing. She cried when Brenna was doing her ballet dance. I love H. She is the best. She is so full of life and love and joy! I never saw anyone have more fun at a recital. EVER.
On my other side was S. She sat there very politely and watched the kids dance. She applauded reservedly and made her comments to me in a whisper with a hand cupped to my ear. The only time she lost her composure was when Bronte turned to the girl next to her in the middle of their dance and started scolding her with her finger in her face. Apparently the girl was crowding her a bit too much and Bronte had taken all that she could take. S was laughing and laughing with her hand over her mouth on one side of me and H was on the other side laughing really loud and saying, "She's
your daughter, Carolyn! Ha! Ha!" Anyway, S was probably thanking God that her daughter plays soccer instead. Even though she plays on the top travel soccer team, I'm positive her expenses for soccer are a quarter of what I pay for frickin' dance.(By the way, S isn't always so reserved. You should have seen her shaking her groove thing at the Neil Diamond concert. She LOOOOOOVES Neil Diamond. We had the crappiest nosebleed seats you could possibly have...we got them for free, so...but S had the best time. I think I knew 3 songs out of the entire concert, but I shook my groove thing too in the name of sisterly solidarity. Next to the Barry Manilow concert I saw in college, it was the cheesiest concert I have ever been too. It was a total riot.)
Well, for the second recital I thought I would help backstage with the younger dancers. I chose to be the "stage Mom" for the 6 year old group since that was Bronte's age group(keep in mind that Bronte has already performed at one recital, so I have no vested interest in any of the kids I am "stage Momming") and I was familiar with the costume changes for all three dances. That way I could watch Brenna dance via the closed circuit TV's they had in each dressing room so you could see what was happening on stage so you could get your dancers backstage in time. Okay, I figured this was going to be easy. However, I didn't count on
other "stage Moms" being there fucking with my mojo. One of the moms of a child in my group just kept hanging around and hanging around until I finally asked her if she was going to go sit in the auditorium and watch the show. She said, "Oh, well... Michelle wants me to stay with her so I thought I would stick around for a little bit until she was comfortable." I turned around to see what her precious little poppet was doing and she was rooting through one of the other kid's dance bags looking for snacks with one hand and pushing the girl who owned the bag away while snarling, "I'm hungry and you
always have food with you, Molly!"
I turned back to the mom and said, "She looks fine to me. Go." Well, the mom looked at me and looked at her daughter and started to leave with this major worried look on her face. Did I mention that she looked like Molly Shannon from Saturday Night Live when she used to play that Catholic school-girl? I kept waiting for her to stick her hands in her armpits and smell them, or drop to one knee and yell, "Superstar!" On the flip side of her amazing resemblance to a Catholic girl on the edge was her incredible I-might-be-crazy vibe. She kept looking around the room when I was talking to her and rocking back and forth from foot to foot. I kept waiting for her to pull a gun out of her bag and put it to my head and say, "Listen, bitch! Don't tell me to sit down. My daughter needs me!" For the rest of the night she was sort-of lurking outside the dressing room and peeking in. Once in a while she would see me looking at her and she would walk away really fast with her butt cheeks all clenched together. Weird. And her kid was this enormous brat. When I was bobby-pinning her flowers in her hair for the ballet number she kept saying "Ouch! You're hurting me!" before I even got anywhere near her head. After she said, "Aren't you being careful?" I was ready to go find a stapler and staple the stupid flowers on her scalp. Plus, her ribbon choker didn't have the snap on it like it was supposed to. I literally just tied the stupid thing around her neck. When she asked me how she was going to get it off I told her I was pretty sure I had a big sharp knife in my purse and I would cut it off. That shut her up for 5 minutes.
One of the other moms kept coming back to the dressing room to take pictures. Every few minutes she would come in with her digital camera and snap away while the kids were switching costumes. "Oh! Look! It's Cindy's first costume change!" "Oh! Look! It's Cindy's first lipstick touch-up!" "Oh! Look! It's Cindy and all her friends getting ready for the tap number!" I finally told her that she had to stop because I was afraid that if she posted any of the pictures on the Internet she'd get arrested for peddling kiddie porn.
Speaking of kiddie porn, I think that next year they ought to do a "Superfreak" number complete with the choreography from "Little Miss Sunshine." I'd laugh my ass off.
