Desperately Searching for Talent

Thanks to all you boys and girls who signed up ahead of time and came out to audition today for the elementary school talent show. And a special thanks to all you kids who added your names to the list five minutes ago, even though it has been posted in the office for three weeks now. Glad to have you here.

We will take the auditions in the order that you signed up on the list. What's that, ma'am? Your daughter who signed up a half hour ago has tennis lessons today and can't stay past 3:00? Well, I'm not sure what to tell you, since there are about thirty kids who signed up ahead of her and it's already 2:45.  Maybe she could come back after tennis, or be late to practice? No ma'am, I have not been told that I'm particularly unreasonable. I'm sorry to hear that. We will miss her version of “I’m a Little Teacup.”

OK, everybody, let’s get started. First, I see, we have Kayden from the 6^th grade playing piano.

[sound of individual piano keys being played in an order that does not necessarily suggest music to the listener]

Wow, OK, thank you for that Kayden. Out of curiosity, how long have you been taking piano lessons? Six years, is that right? Well, thank you for sharing your gift with us today.

OK, next up we have… oh, goody, another piano player. Jade is here from the 2^nd grade.

[sound of Beethoven coming from a broken down old elementary school piano as an eight-year-old virtuoso’s fingers fly over the keys]

(Praise Jesus) Thank you, Jade! That was magnificent, sweetheart! Kayden, you might want to get the name of Jade’s teacher. No reason, just in case yours ever decides to retire or something.

Now we have Suzy and Kendall from the 5^th grade performing a dance routine.

[alleged dance routine takes place intermittently]

Thank you, ladies. One note that I think deserves mentioning – most dance routines out there involve quite a bit of actual dancing. Yours seemed to contain quite a bit of standing and vague, almost imperceptible, arm movements. What’s that? It was for artistic effect? Oh, OK. Is that why you picked such a sad, slow song? Gotcha. OK, thanks for coming today. What’s that? No, no decisions will be made today. (at least no out loud decisions) We will let you know soon.

OK, looks like we have another dance routine. Kylie from the 3^rd grade is here. Take it away, Kylie.

[rap song blares and a dance routine starts that would make the folks in a Prince video blush]

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold the music! Um… Kylie, honey, that kind of dancing is a little inappropriate for elementary school. What’s that, mom? Uh, OK, that might be how she dances at home, but you understand this talent show is being held here for the students, right? And that song can’t be played at school, anyway. What’s that? Well, I guess we could try to find a clean version of it, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t have too many words left. OK, go ahead and see what you can come up with. Moving on.

[two excruciating hours later]

OK, thank you for that. One note – try to sing to the back of the room. No, I don’t think you did. We have your microphone turned all the way up and we can barely hear you. Yes, sing to the back of the room. You are only singing to the back of your own throat.

Great, OK, looks like only one more audition and then we can go home (and seriously reconsider our life choices while we have a stiff drink and try to determine how we are going to put this show together…).

OK, hello Avery from the 4^th grade. What song will you be singing? OK, and do you have the music? You’re going to sing it a cappella? Umm… OK, well, good luck. Let’s hear it.

[sound of the most soulful, rich, powerful, silky-smooth adult singing voice coming from a four-foot-tall girl, which makes every adult in the room weep with awe and joy]

Thank you so much, Avery, for adding your name to the list at the last minute. And thank you for going to this school!

(We’ve got ourselves a talent show!)

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Old School Dance

I’m not one hundred percent sure what has changed, but things are definitely different now, and somehow, I blame cell phones.

When I was in junior high we all couldn’t wait to go to the school dances. Nowadays, inexplicably, we have to tell our boys that they are going. “But it’ll be lame. I don’t wanna go!”

Shut up and get in the car.

Kids just don’t seem to want to hang out at school together after hours as much as we did. I think they are simply too connected now. It’s too easy for them to communicate via texting and Facetime, so they don’t see the value in going to the dance.

Do you know what you can’t do with a text? Slow dance with a girl, that’s what! (I don’t even want to think about or discuss what kids can and can’t do with Facetime, so let’s all just not go there.)

Our boys don’t even have phones, so you would think they would crave the socialization, and yet Son Number One’s biggest highlight at the last dance was buying a Snickers bar and two sodas at the snack table. We didn’t have a snack table when I was his age. We danced with girls! At least we talked a lot about dancing with the girls, and sometimes we actually did.

One problem with the current state of affairs at the middle school/junior high dances might be the music. It’s entirely possible that the songs just aren’t as awesome now, and by “entirely possible,” I mean “definitely true.”

Music today just isn’t as good as it was in the mid-eighties, and many of the songs are so digitally enhanced and auto-tuned that even if the dance was cool enough to have a live band, they wouldn’t be able to perform them anyway.

Many of our dances had live music. Rock bands made up of local high school kids that we actually knew or knew of, who could actually play instruments really well, would come to our junior high dances and cover all the cool Top 40 songs by Bryan Adams, Duran Duran, Night Ranger, etc.

If we had actual video tape of the events, which would have been recorded on actual video tape in a camera the size of a Ford Fiesta, I think we would discover that the bands actually sounded pretty bad. But I remember the events as being on par with a real rock concert, only with parent chaperones and no forty-five-dollar T-shirts for sale.   

As long as I live, I will always remember the night when Tim Spangler, one of the mega-cool older high school kids, showed up at our seventh-grade dance to be the guest singer for one song – What I Like About You, by The Romantics.

I had never seen a guest singer show up to sing anything. I didn’t even know “guest singer” was a thing. At the time, however, I thought it was quite simply the coolest possible thing anyone had ever done on earth, ever.

And has there ever been a song in the history of music that makes you want to dance more than What I Like About You, by The Romantics?

Yes, is the obvious answer. It Takes Two, by Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock makes you want to dance more, but that wasn’t released until 1988, so at the time in the mid-eighties, What I Like About You was the top dance song.

When that opening guitar hits and the whole band shouts, “Hey!” into their microphones, even the chaperones and the principal get up and dance.

It’s sad that kids don’t have those kind of experiences today. I think there’s only one real solution that makes any sense. I’m obviously going to have to DJ the next dance.

Better bust out my mixed tapes.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!