Stage Moms

So, the dance recital. If you watched the little video in the previous post, you know that there really wasn't much dancing. It was really more like a chaos recital. Maggie takes dance through the parks department at the moment, and although they offer classes for all age groups it seems that most of the students are under eight years old. Pretty much every performance included one teacher demonstrating the dance on-stage, two helpers corralling wanderers, three kids actually doing the dance, while four more stand and stare off into space, and five run in circles. All you need now is the partridge and it's like a Christmas carol gone horribly wrong.

In spite of the ridiculousness of the situation, or possibly because of it, I was very proud of Maggie that afternoon. She didn't cry, she didn't run off the stage, she attempted to follow the teacher and even managed to do a little of the dance and wave at the end. She was very proud as well and beaming from ear to ear. She was great... but let me tell you about the stage mom, she sucked.

First of all, Stage Mom (SM) was very proud of herself because she got to be in the opening "party scene" of the recital. It involved choreography and everything. It was pretty lame by all accounts, but she was all a twitter about it afterward. The lights! The crowd! Oh la la! This was my first clue that she sucked. Second: eyeliner on a two year old. She was the ONLY mother that put EYELINER ON HER TWO YEAR OLD! Blush and lip gloss as well! Third clue, her kid comes over to Maggie and shoves her. Maggie looks at me aghast and SM comes up and says, to Maggie, "Oh, it's OK honey, she's just playing, she has a big brother." Tears quickly welled up in Maggie's eyes and I pull her up into my arms to calm.... calm myself because I'm THIS close to shoving the woman and telling her, "Oh, it's OK, you suck!"

I was pleased to see, when the kids hit the stage, no matter how much eyeliner or blush you use to help your kid stand out on stage ("She's a STAR!"), what really makes her stand out is the fact that she's eating the fake snow and frantically attempting to launch herself off the end of the stage. And my little au naturel girl was standing politely in the middle of the stage, waiting for her chance to shine. Have fun Stage Mom!