Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Just another story about my life as a Dance Dad.......

This past weekend two of my girls participated in the local drive for St. Jude's Telethon. Every year their dance studio showcases ten or so routines from the competition teams. Usually I am a spectator/baby wrangler. This year I traded the wrangling for full Dance Dad Duties. Traded, more like the other parental unit was away on business and it needed to be done. No biggie; been there, done that.

We arrived early which turned out to work in our favor. I was able to get into our dressing room, more like make our dressing room (because you can't have a gaggle of pre-teen and teen girls changing all willy-nilly) and calmly rock some hair buns and set up the wardrobe/changing area for the cutest dancers ever. Really I had to make as easy as possible to not screw up their costumes because, as a male I am not allowed where girls are changing.

The younger one had her hair done before we left the house but needed to be touched up. She isn't the most reserved child. It's hard to be reserved when your preferred mode of transportation is cartwheel. You can imagine how even the toughest gel finds itself useless to her onslaught of inverted movement. Since the makeshift dressing room was now occupied, I asked for some gel and bobby pins from the bag. With my back pack full of snacks, with water bottles dangling like I was about to set off on a safari across the Sahara, I proceeded to attempt to get each and every stray hair stage ready.

While being an amateur hairstylist, I noticed another father watching with a grin. Not a malicious grin; more like a "You're doing a good job, man," grin. Or he was totally thinking to himself, "I'd hate to be that guy. Poor S.O.B." I'm betting it was the former. That's when it hit me. I'm doing a good job. I have three girls, all in dance. I am doing what I need to for them. I am doing what a father does for his kids. Isn't that what we are supposed to do? 

There is no way to transition to my final thought so here it is.  If you are a woman or a man (so basically if you have two legs and walk upright) you should stand up for each other EVERY DAY no matter gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic standing, shoe size or hair color. We are all equal. On International Women Day, step in and show your support for the women in your life. Stand up to any injustices you see. We are all the same. Not one of us is better than the other. Once we figure they out, things will fall into place. But if we continue the way we are, "IT" is going to hit the fan. And when things hit fans, things spray into a messy "IT"storm. I have way too much to clean up around here to be cleaning that up too.

*I stole, or repurposed most of the last paragraph from my Facebook post. 

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