Stage Mom Season Begins!

We survived the first round in our three month theater season: the McNeil Canyon School talent show and pie auction!

For those of you who may not realize this, there is a member of my family who is very theatrical and who really needs opportunities to perform. Can you guess which of my children this might be? Irene has a very long and intense hockey season, and we have often discussed which is a more challenging occupation. Irene thinks stage mom-ing is more intense. I have dismissed her often thinking that stage mom-ing is intense, but it is quick...boom/boom...in and out. Whereas hockey is like...Anchorage this weekend, -15 on an outdoor rink next weekend, um, the parents...

I have decided that both are intense but in different ways. The parents are challenging in both arenas, but the challenging parents at hockey are 'in your face' aggressive challenges, whereas the theater parents are passive aggressive behind your back challenges. What I think is funny is how spirit has seen fit to give Irene and I both the opportunity to grow through these experiences. I am much better suited to the aggressive challenges and so this passive-aggressive stuff is very difficult for me. For Irene it is visa versa. Very interesting.

And of course, our kids are good at what they do and so not participating is not an option.

I have been involved preparing for this show by helping coach the kids and help them with their staging. This was not a group of children with stage fright. They all really seemed to be confident and to know exactly what they wanted to do. Their enthusiasm was terrific and their support of each other was surprising. There was no back biting or up staging or anything. It was wonderful to work with them.

If you were one of the fortunate (or not) people who got to read my flaming blog yesterday about my personal frustrations as an educator....um...sorry? Sorry-ish? After the show I decided that the rant of my frustrations, although real and authentic, was inappropriate to post for the world.

If you read that post, I hope that what you take from it is that for gay, lesbian, trans people in the world, most of their experience in their early life is tainted by peoples misguided judgements and assumptions. And how I can only imagine how people who have to deal with it day after day after day must get so beat down, having to fight for their self esteem day after day. Please remember, if God did not want us to see a colorful world, the Alpha and the Omega would not have put cones in our retinas. The world is colorful...embrace it!

It was a full house. The kids were excited and wonderful. They knew their numbers and no one had any major missteps, well, everyone but Mema, who, bless her heart, should not have been put in charge of the camera. I will say that choosing her as the cinematographer was a better choice for me than the choice I made in choosing DeeJay last year as the cinematographer at Jubilee.

Falcom took the stage and was a little stiff at first, but I think that even with a small cold his vocals were true and I was so proud of him! He did not wear a dress. He did try to put on some sparkle fake eyelashes and clip on ear rings, but they were way to distracting for him to try to wear at the last minute. The only "Wild Child" thing he had on was his high boots, and believe me, as his mother, I have to say that those are NOTHING! Everyone had very genuine compliments for him after his performance. I think the coolest part is the kids who are his classmates who have never seen him in action who then came and told him that they loved his singing. It is so cool to build bridges.

While I was behind the screen staging the kids and organizing them, Marina was in desperate need of attention. I could not give her any of the attention she needed and she was acting out like she was this deprived orphan on the streets of Mexico City looking for a peso. I don't know where her aunties or Mema's were, but they were not enough attention for her! It did not take long for me to loose my temper and tell her that she needed to get lost.

At intermission I found that after she slinked off from the show she had gone out into the pie auction hallway and bid on plenty of pies and cakes! Behold also that she is not cheap! Her starting bids were all $10.00! Falcom also took liberty to bid on cakes that he found interesting. Having a math learning disability does not help a mothers sense of calm as I was having to go about putting decimal points into all of his bids or we would have been paying $1000 for each cake that he had written his name on! I spent the entire intermission checking each bid on each cake and pie to make sure that we were not bidding thousands of dollars for pies.

In the end we only won 3 cakes and we were great fodder for Mr. Swanson's Pie Auction jokes.

Below is the video of Falcom's performance. Andrea will be giving me a better copy of the video in the next week or so which I will upload onto YouTube. Until then, enjoy...