I’ve had a lot of different jobs in my life and some I excelled at others, well, let’s just say they didn’t exactly fit my talents. One job, and I do mean job, I totally sucked at was being a dance mom.
Now I know right about now you’re thinking, “Excuse me, but being a dance mom isn’t a job.”
Oh, but it is. I realize that it’s not a paying job and that technically it’s something that could be filed under “things parents do when their child is in an activity” but while all that is correct it totally dismisses the sheer workload of being a dance mom.
Honestly, maybe for some moms it wasn’t seen as work because they had skill in that arena but for me it was work. Work that made me cry. Not ugly cry but I’m telling you there were tears that I passed off as allergies.
This is because to be a good dance mom requires a wide variety of skills starting with being a fashion designer/ seamstress to a one-woman glam squad. I’m absolutely none of those things.
First off, I’m sewing challenged and I was a total disaster at gluing thousands of teeny tiny sparkly stones on all of my child’s costumes. So bad that it always led to a bout of “allergy” tears.
Those tears continued whenever I had to assist my dancer with any “glam.” This is because my cosmetics talent ends at not poking myself in the eye with a mascara wand. Luckily my daughter didn’t seem to be affected by the subpar quality of my work.
All of the above contributed to me being content when the time came in my life to become a retired dance mom or as I like to refer to myself – dance mom emeritus. But last week something weird happened. I felt the pull to attend a dance competition. To go back into the belly of the beast. Which is why I found myself on a Thursday afternoon inside the Overland Park Convention Center.
I was actually a little nervous. It had been five years since I had been at a dance competition. I wondered if things had drastically changed to such an extent that I would feel like a stranger.
I breathed a huge sigh of relief and then immediately got a headache when the first thing I saw when I walked through the door was a woman gluing rhinestones to a costume. The relief was because the sparkle was still living large and the headache was from the noxious glue.
As I walked further into the convention center my heart swelled because nothing had changed. False eyelashes were falling off, the music was so loud you could feel it shaking your spine, moms looked stressed and teenaged dancers were giving those stressed-out moms various degrees of side-eye.
Oh, I remember that side-eye so very, very, well. It instantly brought back a rush of memories that all included “allergy tears.”
I then entered the ballroom where the stage was and sat down to watch some dances and to unleash my classic audience participation cheer of “Work it ladies!” That right there gave me chills because the one thing I did excel at as a dance mom was cheering.
After about an hour I left the competition but not before texting my daughter various photos of me hanging around the venue.
She texted back asking me if I was “okay” and should she be worried that I’m “crashing a dance competition?”
I told her all was well. I was just reliving some memories. This earned me another text that said, “Oh no, are there allergy tears?”
“Maybe,” I responded as I wiped my eyes and then left the competition world behind – again.
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Honestly I can’t leave the competition dance world behind because it’s the star of my latest book – a mystery called ⭐️KILLER DANCE MOM.⭐️ If you’re looking for a fabulous summer read featuring all the characters from my other Snarky in the Suburb books then click on the Amazon link and get busy reading. www.amazon.com/dp/B0C4FZTK5B.
Snarky in the Suburbs 