Talent Show

Last night Bella performed at her school’s talent show.

Wifey and I prepared for days to be supportive like Olive’s parents in Little Miss Sunshine (you know, the scene at the end when it turns out that Olive’s dance talent as choreographed by her Grandfather is really a stripper routine that leaves the audience in shocked, open-mouthed awe at a beauty pageant. Comically hilarious, yet mortifying if it’s your child).

When Bella first decided to audition for the talent show it wasn’t her singing weakness that concerned us, but her choice of songs. See, her song of choice is what she calls her evening lullaby. For us, it just happens to be the only song that Wifey could remember the lyrics to when Bella first called out for a bedtime song in her first few nights here. Now, Wifey serenades the kids to sleep each night with Both Hands by Ani DiFranco.

Both Hands is a song about a relationship dying. Or, according to my Wifey, it’s a song about sex. All in all, not normally the song you hear at a talent show performed by kids in grades 1-6. The poetic beauty of the lyrics “And your bones have been my bedframe / Your flesh has been my pillow” make adults shift uncomfortably in their chairs when they come through lips of an off-key 11 year-old.

At first, we tried to encourage her to make a different song selection for the audition. She wouldn’t.

Then, we expected that the teacher’s would ask her to choose a different song. They didn’t.

And last night, we were there, ready to sing our hearts out alongside her if she morphed into Olive. Thankfully, she didn’t.

We have the whole performance on tape.

What we don’t have on tape is footage of two red-faced parents, shifting awkwardly in their seats, visibly made uncomfortable by the eyes of a packed auditorium boring into the backs of their heads. I do believe that the accompanying unspoken mental narrative would have been, “Who the hell taught their kid a lesbian sex song? Thank god that’s not my kid! That was awkward.”