Mistake 0: I’m not a Movie Dad
Every third movie I watched growing up had the Recital Scene in it. In the Recital Scene, a kid is superexcited to perform, and wants his dad to be there. Except Movie Dad’s busy, and misses it, and solemn music plays and the dad goes to hug the kid but then a nine-pound cell phone rings and he has to get that, and the kid runs away to his room.
That's a movie dad...and a funny one at that.
Today was my daughter’s first recital. I was terrified of being Movie Dad. Movie Dad always has his priorities in the wrong place, ever makes time for the important things in life. Movie Dad triumphs eventually, and often heaves the nine-pound cell phone into the ocean, and makes it to The Big Game or The Performance or The Pumpkin Launching Contest.
But a funny thing happened: I wasn’t. I budgeted enough time to make it to the show. I didn’t get caught up in last-minute work. Even if I did, I decided I would say I couldn’t stay. I passed up an office Christmas party. Yet I was positive I was going to be Movie Dad, unable to show affection until a rascally space alien voiced by Martin Short brought me together with my offspring.
I’m happy to start off this column with a win in my column: there may not be many. Being a parent is a bit like Groundhog Day, where you live the same day over and over. Diapers to be changed, baths to give, dino nuggets to heat up, shoes to smell to see Who Stepped In It.
Except instead of getting better and better, often you (okay, I) get worse. This is because the kids you’re taking care of are not static: they’re changing every day. My older one is independent enough so I don’t have to get her dressed anymore. More time to sleep in!
But that sleeping in means I’M now late for my routine, which means my younger one has more time to scatter loose change (“the moneys”) from the jar all over the floor. And she’s old enough to clean up her own messes, or at least to grok the concept of cleaning up, so what would be thirty seconds for us turns into a six-minute lesson in responsibility, complete with crying and soccer-worthy fake flops on the floor, and then her head hits the wall and the crying is for real, and she needs The Frog before she can clean up the moneys. (We call our icepack The Frog. Looks like a frog.)
There are new challenges every day, sometimes every minute. One wrong step, one mistake, and I’m the one who’s learning something, not them. This happens a lot. Sometimes every day. But not today!
The Christmas recital went well. We had made a zombie costume, and I’m proud to say my daughter looked the most undead of all the children dancing to the Monster Mash. Did anyone else think to add tire tracks? Bloody bite marks around a tear in her shirt? Green shoots of gangrene from an infection? She was the undeadest five-year-old ever!
You may be wondering why they sang Monster Mash at a Christmas recital. I don’t really know why. They also sang the Chang-Chang-Changity-Chang Shoo Bop song from Grease, just as the Three Wise Men did lo these many years ago.
From here on out, I’ll be chronicling my mistakes. Hopefully they’ll be of the I-let-her-out-of-the-house-wearing-red-and-maroon-and-magenta variety, and not the reciprocating-saw-accident kind. I’ll number them: this way, when I hit 100 I get a free SuperCut.
But my first time out, I’d like to humbly brag that I didn’t screw anything up. Sometimes winning is simply not losing all day long.