I once had aspirations of becoming a dancer, but lack of support at home made this impossible. My parents, being of limited means, put me in a third-rate dancing studio, Miss Dolores's. I danced ballet with her for a season or two, and participated in a recital or two, but no one took my talent seriously or gave it the nurturing it deserved. I have regretted this since the day I realized that Joyce Everett was going to be a prima ballerina, and I was not. My parents, however, had another thought, which was that I was exceptional in having been born with two left feet.
One of my great regrets in life was that I was never prosperous enough to buy my children things like dancing lessons. I had hoped to live vicariously through my daughters, but alas, this dream was also crushed by the bruising realities of being a single-income family. Not only was I not to compete with Joyce, my daughters would not compete with hers. Life can be unfair, I know, but I try not to be bitter.
Just when I knew all was lost, the day came when one of my daughters, then a junior in high school announced that she was going to audition for the school dance team. At last my moment had come to shine! I was thrilled. I now got to get up and drive her to school at 6 a.m., so she could practice. Also, since girls need dance clothes, and dance teams can't be seen going around in the same thing all the time, I got to spend $750 on dance clothes.
The dance team coach assured me that money was not a problem. I could work it off. I began by selling expensive stuff that no one wanted to buy. From there, I progressed to chaperoning the homecoming dance. This activity was presented as mandatory. My husband and I must chaperone the dance for 2 hours each. My husband could not chaperone for 4 hours, and my daughter could not chaperone for any time at all. He had to work for 2 hours and so did I. I did not ask what was required of single parents, because, frankly, I was entirely too enchanted with the thought of getting to be in high school again, especially at a dance.
You see, if I had been 20 years younger, I would have been the goth girl that no one talks to. As it was, I was the skinny girl no one talked to. So now was my chance to shine! I was the mother of a dance teamer! I was special! I was cool. I could even lord over the high school girls who had no date, because I did have one. Also, I could hang out with the mothers of the other dancers, who had been dancers themselves in high school. I even got to re-live the part about how they didn't talk to me because I wasn't cool enough or something. It was a blast.
Finally the day came when I was required to help at the chicken-spaghetti dinner. This is the biggest event of the year. I raises as much money as all the other fund-raisers combined. And talk about fun! Being that my forte is writing, I offered to write and distribute press releases. They smiled and told me no thanks. I had committed a faux pas by getting uppity. The mother of a 4th year dancer would do this. The fact that her copy read like directions for setting up a DVD player was unimportant. What was important was that I help with the chicken-spaghetti.
For those of you who are not from the South, Chicken spaghetti is what they serve poor folk in Purgatory (in hell, they get hot-dog goulash). It is disgusting by any standard of consumables I have ever been acquainted with. Ours was no exception. The powers that were had somehow wrangled 500 chickens out of a local meat-packer, which we were supposed to clean, barbecue, strip from the bones and mix with over-cooked spaghetti. Did I mention that the stuff was gross?
Not feeling up to spending several hours cleaning chickens with the girls who were still not talking to me since high school because I still wasn't cool enough, I took a pass. Only in teen-age high-school do-overs, there are no passes. The next day, I was also absent when they served 2,000 plates of dead-bird pasta. The girls who found me invisible when I showed up noticed me when I stayed home. My daughter's account was docked for her 1/30th of the profit, which came to about $100. Oh, the shame!
After fund raising, there was the "trip." This particular year, "we" were going to go on a cruise. The cruise just happened to follow closely on the dance coach's wedding, just before spring break. We were, in essence, providing the dance coach with her honeymoon. I was understandably thrilled to help.
The cruise was a four-night affair leaving from Galveston and stopping at Cancun, Mexico. It cost a mere $750 per person. I was astonished at the handiness of that number. It showed up everytime anything cost money, it seemed. My daughter decided that she was not comfortable leaving the country without her parents, who were of such bad breeding as to be unable to afford to raise the $3000 for the whole family to go. Sadly, we didn't get to watch the dance coach cavort with her new husband in the pool or contract food poisoning, which was plaguing the cruise lines around that time. I will always regret the loss.
However, I will always be grateful for the opportunity to relive that part of high school, just to remember that high school still sucks.
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Comments: 31
As it was, Larry excelled in extra-curricular activities. When the administration tried to strike some references to alcohol in the school yearbook, he and his compadres organized the free speech rebellion of 1987. They commandeered my firm's copier to reproduce broadsides inciting rebellion. The principal was not pleased with him, but I was.
He was in the production crew of the drama club at the school. One of teachers tried to get his attention during a production, when he was engaged in a complex and strenuous maneuver involving curtains. He answered her in language normally used by adults when talking to other adults.
He had two dates to the senior prom, which I thought was quite an accomplishment for a gay kid.
A friend and parent once said to me, "No parent emerges from adolescence unscathed." I suppose that he is right. Still, I bear my scars proudly.
no dance teams at any high school I ever went to .... I did the gymnastics thing... and youngest daughter was in the orchestra - got to go to Disney with that... not TOO flipping expensive
I "helped" with my daughters sojourn into " team sports", and got to experience the thrill of being treated like dirt, once again, by the gods of high school. I did a terrible thing; in noticing that the technique for serving a volleyball, which was being drummed into the heads, though not the hands of the girls, was ludicrous. It involved tossing the ball high in the air, and lunging up to attempt striking it a few inches above the point at which a girl could strike it if they simply held it as high as they could reach. Of course, the additional difficulty involved in such an irrational routine resulted in wild and wimpy serves.
So, I taught my daughter to serve at full extension, with full force, and great precision. When we were alone. BUT, she was instantly criticized if she attempted such a thing anywhere near the *Coach*. It took all season to get her to even try what she knew full well would result in dominating serve after dominating serve, for fear of the *Coach*.
It was the final game of the final tournament, and she threw caution to wind, with the team trailing mightily. She launched her first ace, to the astonishment of everyone there, not as a result of a bizarre sequence of contortions and guesstimates, but quick and smooth and HARD, just over the net. She did this, standing a full three feet behind the actual service line, because she misunderstood the multi-use markings on the gym floor. She repeated the serve action, with the same results. The place was church quite, and the coach was livid.
I did a silly thing then. Sitting no more than three feet behind my super-serving, but misplaced prodigy, I caught her attention as she walked back to do this nasty deed again, by pointing to the lines on the floor, and she nodded, with a slight roll of her eyes. Off the "bench" came the *Coach*, yelling loudly at me, accusing me of undermining her authority. The *Coach* proceeded to march to where we parents sat, and launch into a three minute tirade about how parents are selfish, and ruin their children's experience in sports, by provoking them to ignore the *Coach*.
My daughter tried to continue during this loud dressing down, and managed to get a few more somewhat similar serves to occur, and the score was tied. Two more serves, and the game would be won, and a surprising third place finish had, by a rather over *Coached*team. But, just in the nick of time, the *Coach* wheeled around to my daughter, preparing to serve not two feet away, and yelled "TOSS THE BALL HIGHER", in the middle of the striking action. The rest, as they say, is history.
John, thanks for sharing your experience. I guess there's a little truth in satire after all.
The thing is, you were not dealing with adults, you were dealing with "adult children."
What I mean by that, is that until our shallow society deepens into a culture (remember how very young the USA is!), with appropriate initiations into womanhood and manhood, most USA-ans are going to stay stuck in shallowness.
Of course we receive various life-initiations anyway, like getting periods and dealing with that, like having children or not being able to have them or adopting them....etc.
But it's the cultural/spiritual initiations to which I refer. And the levels of relating we're missing - the Sisterhoods and Brotherhoods, and access to truly wise and empowered Elders.....There's a lot missing. God-the-TV can only fake it for just so long.
As we deepen and mature - and I do know we ARE beginning to do just that (check out the New Warriors site, for example) - then we'll have better values priorities as a whole: sharing, inclusivity, respect for elders, etc.
Keep on going on ;-o
This was a wonderfully ironic article. I love that you could channel the mistreatment to which you were subjected into a humorous observation of the human condition. Great job.
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