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!

Forget Square Dancing

We as a society are right in the midst of torpedoing an entire generation of kids. “How?” you might ask as a parent, in an earnest effort to learn what you can do to stop this catastrophe.

Cell phones.

“Cell phones,” you ask, confused. “What’s wrong with my child having a cell phone?”

A lot of things, in my opinion, but that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s the fact that we parents have cell phones that’s the problem. Specifically, cell phones with built-in video cameras.

You see, God gives us finite and imperfect memories for a reason. If we remembered everything, the species would never survive. Parents, you can totally back me up on this one: If you truly remembered what a sleep-deprived hell it was to have a newborn baby, you would never have another kid.

But those foggy, early-morning memories fade away, and pretty soon, along comes another newborn. Suddenly you’re up at three in the morning again thinking, “Wait a minute, I remember this now. This sucked. Why did we do this again?”

And then the third kid comes along and you have the exact same thought. God is sneaky like that.

It’s the same thing with growing up. The only reason we turn out OK is because the memories of all of our failures and painful mistakes fade away. At least, that was the case with my generation. That’s because our parents were not able to instantly record every single moment of our lives with a device they had in their pockets at all times.

For example, I just came from the elementary school year-end talent show. Sons Number One and Two played the piano, and their mom was not able to make it because she and her mom selfishly went gallivanting across three states on a road trip, leaving me here all by myself to manage three boys that do nothing but fight with each other for every minute that they are awake, driving me to the point of insanity each afternoon around three o’clock, making me want to run screaming away from the house, but I don’t, because I am legally responsible for their safety, and if left alone they would devolve into a three-boy Lord of the Flies scenario in less than fifteen minutes, but mostly because I just don’t like to run.

Where was I? Oh, yeah; recording…

Their mother was unable to be at the talent show, so she asked me to video them. No problem. I can do that with my phone. I dutifully recorded their performances and they both did just fine, despite their acute daily allergic reactions to piano practice.

They weren’t amazingly brilliant. They weren’t horribly bad. They were just good. As such, this time the video recording of their performance is not a big deal. “Here you are, son, performing well. Good job.”

The problem is, we record everything. If their mom had not chosen to abandon us here to fend for ourselves while she merrily tours the west coast, she would have still recorded their performances, even though she was there watching it herself. Go figure.

If we record everything, we will end up capturing all of their highlights, and all of their failures, along with all the regular, standard, unexciting, middle-of-the-road efforts. Depending on the parental video editing, kids these days could grow up thinking their childhood was one big victory lap. They will naturally forget the failures, but if we keep showing them the highlight reel, that’s how they’ll remember things.

On the other hand, if we don’t edit, showing them everything, they won’t be able to forget the failures. Neither one of those outcomes is good.

A better example might be square dancing. I was probably in a talent show as a kid, because talent isn’t a strict prerequisite for an elementary school talent show. I don’t really remember, and I can assure you there is no video evidence if I was, which I can also assure you, is undoubtedly a good thing. I know that I square danced, however.

When Son Number One announced in a dejected voice earlier this year that his fourth-grade class was square dancing at P.E., I said, “We did square dancing when I was your age. It was fun.”

Well, of course it wasn’t fun. It was probably horrific and painful. But God erased that memory for me so I could go on to lead a happy and productive life.

Well, the big hoedown day came for my son, and this time, unlike my childhood, all the parents showed up at P.E. to watch their kids square dance. And there I was alongside everyone else, cell phone in hand, recording the whole traumatic event for him.

He was in agony the entire time, being forced by the wicked gym teacher to do-si-do with actual fourth-grade girls, holding their hands and touching them, and having them smile at him. Ick. It was awful, and he will never be able to forget it.

He won’t have the luxury of that memory fading blissfully into the background fog of the elementary school years like I did, because it has been recorded for posterity. How will he ever reassure his children that square dancing will be fun if he has permanent video proof that square dancing is, in fact, awful? What if his kids see the video before they reach the fourth grade?

No good can come from that. The logical end result will be a nationwide fourth-grade revolt, causing a curriculum shift to remove square dancing, resulting in the first generation since the dawn of time to never learn to square dance, followed by the inevitable worldwide decline and eventual disappearance of square dancing altogether.

Hmm… That actually doesn’t sound bad.

Never mind everything I just said. Keep recording your kids. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go figure out how to get his square dancing video to play on the big TV downstairs so we can all watch it tonight.

Maybe a beer first, though. The kids will be home soon.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2015 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!

The Talent Show

Each year in the last week of school, our elementary school holds a talent show. It is always in the last week, so it was obviously created as filler for teachers who are simply looking to keep the students busy until that final summer dismissal bell rings. Nothing productive at all happens in the last week of school. Nothing ever has in the history of education. Academically speaking, you could eliminate the last week of school without losing any learning, but it’s a paradox… or a conundrum… I don’t know which. Anyway, as soon as you get rid of it, it appears again out of thin air. You always have to have a last week, so it will always be there, just wasting everyone’s time.

Schools have actually been trying to get rid of it for years now. The school districts have been adjusting the calendar every year, desperately trying to eliminate the week where all the teachers stop being educators and start being a cross between sheep herders and concert security, just trying to keep all the kids together and under control for four more days. Each year they cut off the last week, but are forced to add it back to the beginning of the year. That’s why school ends so early now, and the kids go back in August instead of September. We might as well not even have Labor Day anymore if we’re not going to use it for its originally intended purpose; marking when school will start.

So, in an act of pure selfishness, the teachers dragged us, the parents, into their last week of school nightmare by creating a talent show. Sure, it keeps the kids busy for a while for them, but if your child signs up, you, as a parent, are stuck. You must go or you will be letting your child down by not being present at every single significant minute of their lives. Son Number One and Two signed up to play the piano. Thanks a lot, teachers!

“Welcome to the talent show. Let’s get started right away, since we have thirty-five acts.”

Excuse me? Thirty-five!? Oh, sweet mother, we will never get out of here.

OK, time to get comfortable… I’m on a folding metal chair… comfortable is not going to happen. OK, we’re starting with two brothers, a sixth-grader on guitar and his younger brother on drums. Good start. They rock. This is a rock concert. The sixth-grader is singing and I can't understand any of the words, but these kids are really solid. OK, the song is going a little long. Remember kid, thirty-five acts!

Great first act. I am hopeful. Curtain just went down. Oh man, I think they have to break down the drum set. This is going to hurt us on time.

OK, they brought out a comedian in front of the curtain. Good job on the time management. What do you get when you cross a spider with a computer? A web page. Nice one, kid. He was funny and quick. I like him.

My butt is falling asleep on this metal chair, and we are only on act three.

Two girls singing the Taylor Swift song “You Belong to Me” a cappella. They're good, but I think they're going to sing the whole song. OK, they cut it short. Good.

Two third grade girls doing a dance/gymnastic routine to some hip-hop song. Short. OK. One of them cartwheeled off stage and almost collided with stage hand kid. Comic relief for the crowd of students. Collisions are hilarious to elementary schoolers.

Second grade hula hoop routine. Two little girls alternately jumping rope, walking on two little buckets with ropes attached to them, hula hooping and occasionally doing some gymnastics. That might have been the longest two minutes of my life. I am dying.

Piano now. Fifth grade girl. “Let it Go” from Frozen. OK. First appearance of Frozen. Surely more to come. She is wearing a dress.

Now another kid on piano. He played the Star Wars theme and “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Dammit! His songs are cooler than my kids’ songs. My boys are playing some snake charmer song and some Russian dance song that no one knows. Now I’m starting to think my boys’ real talent might be picking obscure piano songs that no one can ba-da-da-dum along with. This kid is also well-dressed. Hmm…

My butt is completely asleep.

Now two girls and more hula hoops. Shakira song. I hate this song. The girls are really good at hula hooping. They even go down to their knees and still hula hoop. There is no way I could do that. The lyrics of this song are not appropriate for elementary school. At least, I don't think they are. I can't understand the words. I hate this song so much.

Two girls doing the cup song from Pitch Perfect. I can only hope that their parents never let them watch the movie, because, wow, not kid-friendly. They did good, but "two bottles of whiskey for the road" might not be the most appropriate elementary school lyric ever, even though two bottles of whiskey is exactly what I want right now.

There is a small fog machine on the back of the stage. It just let off a puff of fog, and for a brief moment I had hope that the stage was on fire and we could leave. No such luck.

Now two girls doing a hip-hop dance routine to “Dynamite.” One of the lyrics is "it goes on and on and on." The song is right. It does. This might never end. We are only on act ten. We really do need whiskey. I whispered to my wife, but she refused to go get some. She is not a team player.

Third grade boy dancing by himself to “Party Rockin’ in the House Tonight.” Crowd favorite. The kids love this guy’s dance routine, which is kind of a mix between the Russian deep-knee-bend dance, break dancing, and a seizure. It was short. I love this kid, too.

Second grade girl with an a cappella version of “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” from Frozen. Only our second Frozen sighting. Not bad.

I no longer have a butt.

Gymnastics now. Two girls ballet dancing and gymnastics tumbling. OK. Too bad the swimmers and baseball players couldn't showcase their after-school sports as well.

The next act is almost identical. Why couldn't they have combined them and had four girls on stage tumbling at once. That would have added a fun and more entertaining level of danger. Remember, kids love collisions. Who’s running this thing?

My boys are up on piano. They rocked it. They absolutely rocked those two songs no one has ever heard of. They are both wearing soccer shorts and stained T-shirts. Were we supposed to dress up for this?

Another piano girl. She is wearing a dress. Whoops.

Now another girl in a nice dress singing a song I don’t know. She’s good. Hey… wait a minute… she was one of the Taylor Swift girls. That isn’t fair! She is extending the time we must be in this room by going twice. She's really good, but she shouldn't get to go twice. One of my legs is going numb and my wife just shoved her elbow into my ribs to keep me from squirming.

Here’s something new. A fourth-grade boy with a round plastic trash can. There is a hole in the bottom and the top is covered with clear plastic. His little sister just filled it with fog from the fog machine. When he slaps his hand on the plastic cover, it shoots twelve-inch smoke rings out over the audience. The kids love it! That is very cool... Hang on, kid… is your talent having a dad who built you a smoke ring machine? This smacks of the solar system model that "my son made" a few weeks ago. Parental involvement is obvious and necessary for the science fair project, but let's keep the dads out of the talent show, shall we? I need to build one of those and get a fog machine. How cool would it be to have a fog machine in the house?

More Frozen. Two sisters, second grade and kindergarten, doing a “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” duet. They are in full-on Disney Frozen dresses and tiaras. I can’t see them anymore, because their mom is sitting in front of me recording them with her iPad, which is blocking my view of the stage. I am now watching them on the iPad screen instead. They are very cute, but no, I do not want to build a snowman. Quit asking.

Now two girls wearing feather boas and lip-syncing a song I don't know. It’s girl band complaint rock. No like. My boys have already gone. Can we leave yet? My wife says we have to stay until the end. I do not understand her sometimes. My other leg is starting to go numb. My butt is gone.

Wait. There's another girl who is going twice. We are going to be here forever. I am going to die in this room.

Sixth grade girl belting out “This Girl is on Fire.” She is awesome. She gives me goose bumps. She gives me hope. For the first time since the guitar/drum kids I do not want to run out of this room. There is no way I could run out of this room anyway. Not on these legs and without a butt.

Sixth grade boy doing a solo hip hop dance routine. I can't concentrate because my feet are now going to sleep. He is good. He can spin on one knee. I would try that right now if I thought it would fix my butt and leg problems.

More piano. Another girl wearing a dress and heels. I’m really starting to think we should have dressed our boys a little better this morning. She curtsied at the end. Wow, professional.

Older girl now on piano. She is wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Vindication! Holy cow, she is really good. She is better than really good. I guess when you're that good you don't need to dress up. My boys are not that good. We need to put our boys in tuxedos next time. Some kids’ cell phone just rang in the middle of her performance. I have no words for how wrong that is on so many levels.

Sixth grade girl with legs as tall as she is. Ballet/ hip-hop/gymnastics. If she ever grows into her legs she will be six-foot-six.

Two more little girls singing “Do You Want to Build a Snowman.” Their cuteness can no longer outweigh my growing distain for this song. I hate Frozen.

Yet another girl wearing a Frozen dress. Kindergartner. She is signing “Let it Go.” I would let it go, but you elementary school girls won't let me. I might not be able to walk, but I’ll bet I could crawl out that side door right there.

Three sixth grade girls in tutus and Mexican hats singing “I'm a Little Teapot.” Now another one is rapping about a teapot. What fresh hell is this? The other three just came back on stage to a hip-hop song. One of them is dressed in a cow costume complete with udders. I have no words for how much I don't want to be here.

More hip-hop dance. Large group of sixth-graders. I think I blacked out during their routine and came to during the applause. It’s over. Is it really over? A teacher is speaking and the kids are getting up. It really is over.

I tried to stand on my dead legs, but they would not cooperate. I have fallen and I can’t get up. Drag me, honey. Just drag me. We need to get out of here before they realize it was only thirty-one acts!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 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!