I’ve come to Hopkinton to find Frank. Standing in Blaser’s Fireside Tavern in the early evening of a warm late summer night, I’m talking with my contact, Jay Bowe. Jay’s invited me to join her and the team from ECTO, the East Coast Transcommunication Organization, for a night of paranormal investigation, or what laymen might call “ghost bustin’.” Jay introduces me to Nancy Blaser. She and her husband Terry have owned Blaser’s since 1999, and Nancy assures me the place is haunted, recounting story after story of spectral encounters. This is when I learn about Frank.
Frank Mills is Blaser’s resident ghost, and he’s been haunting this place since he shot himself dead in 1926, distraught over the death of his young bride the year before. Nancy must serve quite a pepper steak for anyone, dead or alive, to stick around the same place for seventy years, but before I can order from the pub menu, I head upstairs to meet the team. The ECTO members are easy to spot – they’re the ones dressed in black with the expensive AV equipment. One guy sets up the video cameras, microphones and VRCs; another unpacks his temperature gauges; a woman plays with a pendulum while another boots up a laptop. Between the dark clothes, facial hair and high-tech equipment, I feel like I’m backstage at an Allman Brothers concert, but then Tim Derr, the ECTO member specializing in EMF (electromagnetic frequency detection), introduces himself and shows me his tool of choice, the copper dowsing rod. I’d always thought dowsing rods were for mildly nutty people looking for water as the PBS cameras roll, but Tim is normal, chatty and definitely not nutty. Tim explains that dowsing rods can be used to detect changes in electromagnetic frequency, “a good sign that there’s spectral energy close by.”
This prompts another member, Ron Pinkham, with a gift for “spectral videography” to tell me, “It’s all about energy. These ghosts have energy that always exists, so we use these tools to find the energy.” Just then, Tim’s twin rods start spinning around as he approaches the stairwell, prompting Ron to use a hand-held EMF meter, but instead of stumbling upon our first ghost of the night, Ron and Tim agree that there must be power cables running behind the wall, Ron remarks, “That’s not paranormal, that’s just dangerous.” He continues, “Most of what we do is prove each other wrong. We want to make sure what we find is legit. We tell each other all the mistakes we’re making so we can prove the good stuff.” I can’t help but think these guys would make great house inspectors.
I need to be straight with you – I’m a believer. Granted, I might not sleep in cemeteries on Halloween and know my sisters rigged the Ouija board, but I’ve no doubt that some departed souls just never got the memo about the big sleep. And I admit it doesn’t take much to scare me – one scene in The Sixth Sense made me yelp aloud in a packed movie theater like a pre-teen girl with a wooly spider in her popcorn, and I often run faster than Edwin Moses getting up my basement stairs, just in case someone or something is following me, which I’m pretty sure is true most of the time.
It’s getting dark outside, and the team continues to set up. ECTO’s two leaders, Karen Mossey and Mike Sullivan, give me a quick overview of the world of paranormal investigation. Karen’s specialty is EVP - electronic voice phenomena - and she shows me her digital voice recorder, explaining that spirits, “manipulate the energy in the recording devices,” sometimes leaving behind their voices. Mike then gives me a primer in EVP, playing a series of creepy recordings, where I hear voices say things like, “We’re the hunters,” in a chilling, old-fashioned accent, and another that says, “I love you,” but not in the way you’d really want whispered in your ear. I listen and nod, but all I can think of is that I’ll never invite Karen to my house – with my luck, she’ll wander around with her voice recorder discovering the one ghost who loves to mock my personal hygiene. “Nose picker,” it would say or something just as revealing.
Mike, who’s been doing this kind of work for thirty-plus years, tells me that images of ghosts most often appear as reflections in mirrors or glass objects, which explains why he’s arranged a dozen or so old bottles and small mirrors throughout the third floor and why he takes photo after photo like an over-medicated tourist with film to burn. Mike shows me a photo from his collection, a tiny one of a man wearing a morning coat and bowler, and I get queasy because I’m pretty sure I’m staring at a picture of a man who’s been dead for fifty years. I bet if I fake left and run right, I can make it downstairs and to my car in twenty seconds, but it’s dark in the parking lot and who knows what’s out there waiting for me, so I thank Mike for the lesson and gird myself for what’s next.
The team gathers, and Karen begins in the near-pitch black on the third floor. I ask no one in particular if I should have some sort of safe word if Frank gets me in his ghostly clutches, like “binkie” or “mommy,” but the team is in no mood for jokes. Karen asks for quiet, calling out to Frank, urging him to join us. We’re greeted with silence, save for the soft snapping of digital photos. ECTO then moves into overdrive, using every tool at its disposal, exploring all parts of the tavern’s second and third floors. Karen hands me a thermalined monocular, a night-vision scope, and I walk around in the dark, praying that I see only people I recognize through the green-tinted lens.
The more the team explores every corner, I wonder if they’re frightening the ghosts away. If I were a ghost, these black-clad leaders of the AV Alumni Society calling out my name might make me hide in the floorboards for the night. I ask Audra Pinkham, Ronnie’s sister, if ghosts can be scared off, and she tells me, “If ghosts aren’t ready to go to the light, they are not ready and they are not leaving.” I prep my best Jo Beth Williams imitation, (“Carol Ann, stay away from the light!”) but think better of it and get back to my night vision duties.
Somehow, I find myself alone on the third floor in absolute darkness. I knew this was a bad idea. I’m in the one area in New Hampshire where ghosts book their appearances months in advance, and we’ve baited Frank into showing his ghostly face right in this room! But before I can hyperventilate into unconsciousness, I hear something downstairs. I hustle off to find the group huddled together, excited about a discovery, the first of the night. Karen presses play on her recorder, and we hear her voice call out, “Is there anybody here? Speak if you are here. Who is here?” And then we hear one word, spoken in a low, peculiar voice. The voice says, “Frank.” The team is ecstatic – real EVP proof that Frank has arrived! They may be thrilled, but my stomach feels like my pancreas is holding onto my duodenum for dear life, the three of them scared out of their wits, just like me.
As we listen again and again to Frank’s voice, I’m struck by the fact that these people are like the paparazzi – they sit around with expensive cameras and gear, waiting for a glimpse of someone special to show his face and then they pounce.The group heads back upstairs, but my night’s over. Tim’s dowsing rods may have found something else, and Karen’s planned a full séance to continue the chitchat with Frank, but I’ve heard enough to know there really are things that go bump in the night. Besides, it’s getting late and this crowd looks like it could go all night. I need to get home to go to sleep. With the lights on.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
A Day No Pumpkins Shall Die
Ah yes, New England in fall. Leaf-covered lawns, brisk mornings, shorter days, crisp apples and firewood to stack. But then you had to show up with an armful of pumpkins and ruin everything. Explain to me your fascination with the Cucurbita maxima. Everywhere I look I see them, grotesque, oblong, inert blobs of orange lassitude, rotting ever so slowly since that creepy kid who works at the farm stand sliced their connection to life, kick-starting their decline towards rot. And I’ve seen you, laughing and cavorting in those roadside pumpkin fields, searching for just the right one to leave on your doorstep while its carcass begins its decline. You act like that pumpkin patch is heaven and those vegetables were fluffy orange clouds of mirth and joy.
Well, one family’s heaven is another man’s gourd-filled hell, and I ain’t having any of it. When I see a pumpkin, I think of getting my ass kicked as a twelve-year old on Halloween. And I’m reminded of my family as a kid – we were that family that always bought a few mega-pumpkins the size of bulldozer tires. We’d display our burnt sienna bounty on the front porch or by the back door, announcing to the world that we too could read a calendar and suspected winter was on its way. Sometimes we’d make jack o’lanterns, each of us trying to make the perfect scalene triangle eyes and gap-toothed smile. We also were too damn lazy, waiting until Flag Day to remove these rotted vessels of pagan misery, needing hazmat suits, a wet-vac and snow shovels to clean up the congealed pools of fetid pumpkin flesh that cascaded down our steps.
And let’s not forget the pumpkin bisque served at a friend’s wedding in 1993. Nothing ruins a belly full of free beer and good music like a steaming hot bowl of pumpkin gruel. The band’s drummer should have banged out a slave galleon beat while we force-fed ourselves the nutmeg-tinged slop. Considering the happy couple is now divorced, I’m convinced if we’d had a nice clam chowder or perhaps skipped the soup and had a simple salad with leafy greens and a soy dressing, those two would still be together.
Combine that edible pumpkin memory with the earnest Starbucks barista trying to foist a few squirts of pumpkin-flavored corn syrup in my $4 cup of steamed milk last week, and I pray for a day when no pumpkins shall die.
Every Halloween, Keene, New Hampshire crows about displaying the largest collection of carved pumpkins on the planet. Let’s remind the proud, misguided and clearly not-busy-enough-at work citizens of Keene that this is because no other country in the world considers it a worthy thing to grow something for five months, drive it to a church parking lot, dragoon a cub scout into marking up the price and extorting you into buying one so you can rip the top open, thrown out all the edible parts, carve a cretinous visage on the front and then cram an open flame in its disemboweled stomach. Most humans on this planet go through that trouble to stop their children’s stomachs from distending any further. But seriously, don’t mind me. Thanks for the pumpkins. It wouldn’t be fall without them.
Well, one family’s heaven is another man’s gourd-filled hell, and I ain’t having any of it. When I see a pumpkin, I think of getting my ass kicked as a twelve-year old on Halloween. And I’m reminded of my family as a kid – we were that family that always bought a few mega-pumpkins the size of bulldozer tires. We’d display our burnt sienna bounty on the front porch or by the back door, announcing to the world that we too could read a calendar and suspected winter was on its way. Sometimes we’d make jack o’lanterns, each of us trying to make the perfect scalene triangle eyes and gap-toothed smile. We also were too damn lazy, waiting until Flag Day to remove these rotted vessels of pagan misery, needing hazmat suits, a wet-vac and snow shovels to clean up the congealed pools of fetid pumpkin flesh that cascaded down our steps.
And let’s not forget the pumpkin bisque served at a friend’s wedding in 1993. Nothing ruins a belly full of free beer and good music like a steaming hot bowl of pumpkin gruel. The band’s drummer should have banged out a slave galleon beat while we force-fed ourselves the nutmeg-tinged slop. Considering the happy couple is now divorced, I’m convinced if we’d had a nice clam chowder or perhaps skipped the soup and had a simple salad with leafy greens and a soy dressing, those two would still be together.
Combine that edible pumpkin memory with the earnest Starbucks barista trying to foist a few squirts of pumpkin-flavored corn syrup in my $4 cup of steamed milk last week, and I pray for a day when no pumpkins shall die.
Every Halloween, Keene, New Hampshire crows about displaying the largest collection of carved pumpkins on the planet. Let’s remind the proud, misguided and clearly not-busy-enough-at work citizens of Keene that this is because no other country in the world considers it a worthy thing to grow something for five months, drive it to a church parking lot, dragoon a cub scout into marking up the price and extorting you into buying one so you can rip the top open, thrown out all the edible parts, carve a cretinous visage on the front and then cram an open flame in its disemboweled stomach. Most humans on this planet go through that trouble to stop their children’s stomachs from distending any further. But seriously, don’t mind me. Thanks for the pumpkins. It wouldn’t be fall without them.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Bingo!
Just as peanut butter has jelly, and Jerry Lewis had Dean Martin, bingo will forever have smoking. A few weeks back I spent a night playing bingo and smoking at the Concord Bingo Center, learning a few key lessons. First, poor math skills as a child do not make bingo any easier; second, bingo demands a high degree of mental dexterity; and third, nicotine and French fries are no match for Lady Luck’s capricious whims.
I visited the Bingo Center to experience a night of carefree games of chance with a lit smoke in my hand, relishing what I bet will be the final days of one of the last true freedoms we have in the Granite State. Truthfully, I’m not a smoker, although I’ve had my share of furtive, late-night puffs outside parties to look cool and impress my neighbors. Earlier that day I’d heard of the State House’s plan to ban smoking in most public places, not sure if bingo parlors made the cut, remembering that social, fraternal and religious organizations are exempted from the ban, “only if smoking areas can be segregated effectively."
The first thing I notice in the Center is that the best chance you have of segregating the non-smokers is to find them a cozy bingo room of their own, somewhere outside Tuftonboro perhaps, because the smoke is so thick I’m sure I can walk across it. It hangs in the motionless air like dense fog on a crisp spring morning, but nobody, non-smokers and smokers alike, could care less. There’s bingo to play!
I walk to the front, the room already filled with almost 200 players, each of them carving out a spot at one of the long rows of plastic tables, like early morning beach goers before the start of a muggy day. They sit in pairs and small clusters, the tables spotted with charms of all kinds – pink-haired troll dolls, wide-eyed gremlins, ceramic cows and lucky ash trays. I reach the head of the line, fork over $25 and act like I’ve been here before. Collecting my game sheets and my new bingo marker, I’m handed a large paper grocery bag. Just as I start wondering if the bag’s for all the money I’m planning on winning, a wily veteran sitting near the front tells me with no prompting, “It’s for your garbage.”
Now knowing it’s clear I have no idea what I’m doing, I hope someone will pity me when I find my seat in the smoking section. I sit down and light up my first smoke of the night. Someone approaches, and he too is smoking. I assume he’s on his way over to chat about how Parliament Lights and Menthol Kools are alike in so many ways, but as he introduces himself, I realize either my bewildered gaze or my constant gumming of my cigarette make it clear I am a fish out of these cloudy waters. Don Gelinas is tonight’s caller, and he walks me through the rules and then stops, sees the stack of sheets in front of me and says, “Are you sure you can handle all these games?” with genuine concern. I take a drag, try not to cough in his face and assure him I got it covered.
Across from me sits Rose Lord, an experienced player with a Philadelphia accent that cuts throw the smoke between us. She shakes my hand, offering a simpler explanation. “Just watch the board – you’ll see the pattern up there. You can sneak a peek at the TV in the corner – that will give you a head start on the next number called. I’ll make sure you don’t get too confused,” she says with a smile. I notice the close-circuit TVs that ring the room as well as the basketball hoops against the wall. The TVs and the smoke remind me of a jai alai fronton in Ft. Pierce, and the basketball hoops seem completely out of place. Of all the scenarios likely to break out here tonight, a spontaneous three-on-three shirts vs. skins hoops game is not one of them.
Don is up front, microphone in hand, and the bingo balls start percolating in the wind-driven drum next to him. He calls the first number in a buttery voice, and we begin. For full immersion, I’ve decided to smoke a cigarette per game. After three quick games, my head is swirling, my hands are shaking, and I’m pretty sure I won that Block of Nine with the Wild Card, but the surge of nicotine in my bloodstream would have distorted my voice. Yelling “Bangoo” in a crowded room is not my idea of blending in, so I keep my head down, ask Rose for advice and try not to embarrass myself.
I lose game after game – the Arrow, the Six Pack, the Picture Frame and the Layer Cake - never even close to bingo. I start to wonder when the beer guy will come around, but Rose explains that there is no liquor at bingo. A shame, I think, but then again, booze leads to chatter, and chatter leads to distraction, and that’s a combination for losing, so no booze at bingo.
As my unlucky streak continues, I notice the employees circling the room, selling pull tab lottery tickets for $10 a pack. Irene Garceau, sitting next to me, explains that these tickets are a huge seller. She tells me lots of people spend over $100 a night on these, hoping to win far more than that, noting that a woman won over $5,500 a few weeks back. The employees carry the packs in little plastic trays, like workers at a blood drive, collecting money and dishing out packs of lottery tickets like gauze pads and “Be Nice. I Donated!” stickers.
Finally, as I creep into the second half of my pack of cigarettes, I wonder if I can use my paper bag for the vomit that’s surely to come, but instead I order some fries, light another smoke and prepare to conquer the Martini glass game that’s up next. “Don’t forget the olive!” cracks Norma Jean Smith, a veteran caller who sits down at my table to dispense wisdom. I try a joke of my own, hearing Don call, “B-12.” I add, “That’s the closest anyone’s getting to a vitamin tonight!” but it’s met with silence.
By the time the Carryover Coverall approaches, I’ve had enough fried food and cigarettes to contemplate looking for a portable defibrillator, but Rose interrupts me to tell me how much she enjoys bingo. “I haven’t won in a while,” she tells me. When I ask her about the ban that may mean she can’t smoke in here, she looks at the big board, taps an ash into the ashtray and says, “Smoking is my only pleasure.”
Just before the night ends, Rose wins a few hundred bucks on a Regular Bingo game. “Come back,” she tells me, “you brought me luck.” And as the night ends, Linda Lampon, Irene’s daughter, also wins, yelling “Bingo!” like she sat on a tack. Then Don bids goodnight, reminding us all to take care on the roads. Irene turns to me and says, “There are nice people at Bingo.” And I agree. Nice people who love their routine, love their game and love their smoking. And it would seem a shame to change any of it.
I visited the Bingo Center to experience a night of carefree games of chance with a lit smoke in my hand, relishing what I bet will be the final days of one of the last true freedoms we have in the Granite State. Truthfully, I’m not a smoker, although I’ve had my share of furtive, late-night puffs outside parties to look cool and impress my neighbors. Earlier that day I’d heard of the State House’s plan to ban smoking in most public places, not sure if bingo parlors made the cut, remembering that social, fraternal and religious organizations are exempted from the ban, “only if smoking areas can be segregated effectively."
The first thing I notice in the Center is that the best chance you have of segregating the non-smokers is to find them a cozy bingo room of their own, somewhere outside Tuftonboro perhaps, because the smoke is so thick I’m sure I can walk across it. It hangs in the motionless air like dense fog on a crisp spring morning, but nobody, non-smokers and smokers alike, could care less. There’s bingo to play!
I walk to the front, the room already filled with almost 200 players, each of them carving out a spot at one of the long rows of plastic tables, like early morning beach goers before the start of a muggy day. They sit in pairs and small clusters, the tables spotted with charms of all kinds – pink-haired troll dolls, wide-eyed gremlins, ceramic cows and lucky ash trays. I reach the head of the line, fork over $25 and act like I’ve been here before. Collecting my game sheets and my new bingo marker, I’m handed a large paper grocery bag. Just as I start wondering if the bag’s for all the money I’m planning on winning, a wily veteran sitting near the front tells me with no prompting, “It’s for your garbage.”
Now knowing it’s clear I have no idea what I’m doing, I hope someone will pity me when I find my seat in the smoking section. I sit down and light up my first smoke of the night. Someone approaches, and he too is smoking. I assume he’s on his way over to chat about how Parliament Lights and Menthol Kools are alike in so many ways, but as he introduces himself, I realize either my bewildered gaze or my constant gumming of my cigarette make it clear I am a fish out of these cloudy waters. Don Gelinas is tonight’s caller, and he walks me through the rules and then stops, sees the stack of sheets in front of me and says, “Are you sure you can handle all these games?” with genuine concern. I take a drag, try not to cough in his face and assure him I got it covered.
Across from me sits Rose Lord, an experienced player with a Philadelphia accent that cuts throw the smoke between us. She shakes my hand, offering a simpler explanation. “Just watch the board – you’ll see the pattern up there. You can sneak a peek at the TV in the corner – that will give you a head start on the next number called. I’ll make sure you don’t get too confused,” she says with a smile. I notice the close-circuit TVs that ring the room as well as the basketball hoops against the wall. The TVs and the smoke remind me of a jai alai fronton in Ft. Pierce, and the basketball hoops seem completely out of place. Of all the scenarios likely to break out here tonight, a spontaneous three-on-three shirts vs. skins hoops game is not one of them.
Don is up front, microphone in hand, and the bingo balls start percolating in the wind-driven drum next to him. He calls the first number in a buttery voice, and we begin. For full immersion, I’ve decided to smoke a cigarette per game. After three quick games, my head is swirling, my hands are shaking, and I’m pretty sure I won that Block of Nine with the Wild Card, but the surge of nicotine in my bloodstream would have distorted my voice. Yelling “Bangoo” in a crowded room is not my idea of blending in, so I keep my head down, ask Rose for advice and try not to embarrass myself.
I lose game after game – the Arrow, the Six Pack, the Picture Frame and the Layer Cake - never even close to bingo. I start to wonder when the beer guy will come around, but Rose explains that there is no liquor at bingo. A shame, I think, but then again, booze leads to chatter, and chatter leads to distraction, and that’s a combination for losing, so no booze at bingo.
As my unlucky streak continues, I notice the employees circling the room, selling pull tab lottery tickets for $10 a pack. Irene Garceau, sitting next to me, explains that these tickets are a huge seller. She tells me lots of people spend over $100 a night on these, hoping to win far more than that, noting that a woman won over $5,500 a few weeks back. The employees carry the packs in little plastic trays, like workers at a blood drive, collecting money and dishing out packs of lottery tickets like gauze pads and “Be Nice. I Donated!” stickers.
Finally, as I creep into the second half of my pack of cigarettes, I wonder if I can use my paper bag for the vomit that’s surely to come, but instead I order some fries, light another smoke and prepare to conquer the Martini glass game that’s up next. “Don’t forget the olive!” cracks Norma Jean Smith, a veteran caller who sits down at my table to dispense wisdom. I try a joke of my own, hearing Don call, “B-12.” I add, “That’s the closest anyone’s getting to a vitamin tonight!” but it’s met with silence.
By the time the Carryover Coverall approaches, I’ve had enough fried food and cigarettes to contemplate looking for a portable defibrillator, but Rose interrupts me to tell me how much she enjoys bingo. “I haven’t won in a while,” she tells me. When I ask her about the ban that may mean she can’t smoke in here, she looks at the big board, taps an ash into the ashtray and says, “Smoking is my only pleasure.”
Just before the night ends, Rose wins a few hundred bucks on a Regular Bingo game. “Come back,” she tells me, “you brought me luck.” And as the night ends, Linda Lampon, Irene’s daughter, also wins, yelling “Bingo!” like she sat on a tack. Then Don bids goodnight, reminding us all to take care on the roads. Irene turns to me and says, “There are nice people at Bingo.” And I agree. Nice people who love their routine, love their game and love their smoking. And it would seem a shame to change any of it.
Monday, May 28, 2007
One Day We Shall Look Back on This, and I Shall Blame You
The season of shame is over. With summer’s advent we say goodbye to that most dreaded of events - those two hours when every sane parent prays for an asbestos scare or a teamster strike – that one scheduled activity that may haunt us and our progeny forever – summer is when we say goodbye to the Dance Recital.
The Dance Recital is as close as most of us will ever get to structured child abuse, and we should all be ashamed. Every late spring we find ourselves, ninety minutes early, clutching a bouquet of cheap flowers in noisy cellophane, depositing the grandparents in seats just close enough to see movement and color but far enough away not to notice the kiddie burlesque abomination about to unfold in front of them, while we wrestle with a video camera from 1993 with the detachable sound cone and boom mike. Meanwhile, your wife is trying to wrestle your daughter into some sort of taffeta sequined ball gown chopped at the knees and staple a plastic bowler on the bewildered kid’s sweaty head. You stay safely away, knowing your child’s muffled cries from beneath the non-breathable fabric will only fill you with more guilt.
Then, the lights go down, the music comes up and you glance at the program to see what this year’s theme is. But it won’t really matter because there are only so many ways you can tie together Thursday’s Hip Hop III Advanced with Monday’s Pre-K Fish Hop and Tumbleriffic class. Oddly, both work perfectly in such annual themes as “Dance Around the World,” “Dancin’ USA,” and “All Growed Up! Look at Me!”
The dancers’ names and outfits may change year after year, but every dance recital has the same cast – the fish-eyed kid who’s got to be hiding gills underneath that spangly top and jazzy skirt; or the tarted-up 8th grader who does a pre-dance pole routine while all the dads immediately distract themselves by the expiration date on their camera’s batteries. Nothing like staring at the ceiling while AC/DC’s “You Shook Me” blares over the auditorium’s speakers – you know just one glance at the stage and you’ll either turn to salt or take one huge step closer to becoming just like your pervy uncle Clint, who’s probably in the balcony right now filming the routine for posterity. Or the three-year old with the thousand-yard stare who has no business being in public much less in a poodle skirt and bobbie socks in front of hundreds of strangers. She’s been there since dawn, with the other polka dot chain gang, and she’s consumed twice her weight in Sour Patch Kids and mini Krackle bars. Just as the music starts for her first number, Our Little Pumpkin gets shoved onstage, stares offstage while every adult points and yells at her, and then, mercifully, Pumpkin is yanked off by the dance instructor’s assistant, who patrols the stage like a Stalag 17guard.
Or the chubby kid who is, by far, the best dancer in the building but those peanut cluster bars taste sooo good after practice that you really can’t blame her. Or the poor jug-headed child with ears the size of manhole covers – sadly, no neon sunbonnet or tribal headdress will hide those appendages, and the crowd gasps whenever the child leaps, fearing she’ll take flight, those enormous wings on her head lifting her to the rafters. No dance recital would be complete without the little girl who just doesn’t have the beat, stumbling around like she’s had a few shots backstage, only the stiff tautness of the gold-lacquered bodice stretched across her belly keeping her from hitting the floor and staying there until “Natural Woman” ends and the guards drag her offstage.
Each dance is relentless in it persistent howl of bizarre mediocrity, and I find myself praying for Albanian separatists to burst through the doors, ready to take us all hostage – but they’d see the lack of rhythm, the ill-fitting costumes and the torturous interpretation of Hall and Oates’ “Maneater” and they’d hightail it out of there, their grenades and dignity still firmly intact.
There are some in the audience who seem to really be enjoying themselves – the same parents who never miss the new Kidz Bops CD and who think nothing of car windows slathered in stickers. There’s no doubt that if you’re cruising down the highway, cranking “Banana Phone” your lateral vision obscured by the many moods of My Pretty Pony, you can’t wait for Dance Recital season.
Another truth of these events is how often the dance instructors find themselves onstage as well. OK, we get it! You Love Dance! That’s why we drag our kids to your studio next to the GNC store at the mall near Osco Drug – because you love it so much. But do you need to find yourself in the middle of every other routine? Maybe you should stop shouting from the wings – you’re no better than the little league coach who tells every kid what to do on every pitch and batted ball. “Step two and shake your bum,” “Throw it to second base. SECOND BASE!” “Hop step two and sashay. Sashay! Come ON!” "Listen! Why won't you LISTEN?"
“Hey Mickey” followed by “Sea Cruise” followed by “Let’s Get This Party Started” followed by the theme song from The Aristocats . . . I’m sure this recital is being simulcast in Purgatory, and as the adults come out for the final dance – usually an awkward tap dance with our brave dance instructor and academy owner/operator leading the charge front and center – it strikes me. The only reason we’re doing this is because there are seven or eight grown women who won’t let go. They loved dance so much as children that they’ve created an entire universe in support of their habit – a universe filled with weekly lessons, absurdly priced outfits, cheap flowers, video cameras and gaudy lipstick, not to mention shoes, sequins, hairspray, leotards and a DVD to relive this horror any time we want. No one ever told them they really didn’t have any rhythm and that unless you’re on Broadway, sweetie, them tap shoes ain’t good for nothin’ but killing bugs. Just like the psycho soccer dads, loony hockey moms and third base coaches from hell, these people are doing this for themselves. The kids are just a means to an end. And if that entails you forking over hundreds of dollars and dragging your kid to lessons twice a week for 47 weeks a year while Pumpkin covers every last free space on that backseat window with a Strawberry Shortcake sticker, then so be it – that’s really your problem to handle – just don’t be tardy picking Pumpkin up or it’s a $15 late charge.
Well, I think my daughter’s done with dance. Sure, she’ll miss it a bit next fall, but by the time spring rolls around and she’s outside with mud in her toes and sun on her face, she’ll barely remember the forced labor two-step jamboree we made her endure last year. But, if in twenty years, as we find ourselves in a shouting match over Thanksgiving dinner, our little girl blaming the dance recital and our ignorance for her shortcomings as she shouts about how her Beachside Tabouli Shack business model would work if we’d only never let her dance in a recital, at least we’ll have the DVD.
The Dance Recital is as close as most of us will ever get to structured child abuse, and we should all be ashamed. Every late spring we find ourselves, ninety minutes early, clutching a bouquet of cheap flowers in noisy cellophane, depositing the grandparents in seats just close enough to see movement and color but far enough away not to notice the kiddie burlesque abomination about to unfold in front of them, while we wrestle with a video camera from 1993 with the detachable sound cone and boom mike. Meanwhile, your wife is trying to wrestle your daughter into some sort of taffeta sequined ball gown chopped at the knees and staple a plastic bowler on the bewildered kid’s sweaty head. You stay safely away, knowing your child’s muffled cries from beneath the non-breathable fabric will only fill you with more guilt.
Then, the lights go down, the music comes up and you glance at the program to see what this year’s theme is. But it won’t really matter because there are only so many ways you can tie together Thursday’s Hip Hop III Advanced with Monday’s Pre-K Fish Hop and Tumbleriffic class. Oddly, both work perfectly in such annual themes as “Dance Around the World,” “Dancin’ USA,” and “All Growed Up! Look at Me!”
The dancers’ names and outfits may change year after year, but every dance recital has the same cast – the fish-eyed kid who’s got to be hiding gills underneath that spangly top and jazzy skirt; or the tarted-up 8th grader who does a pre-dance pole routine while all the dads immediately distract themselves by the expiration date on their camera’s batteries. Nothing like staring at the ceiling while AC/DC’s “You Shook Me” blares over the auditorium’s speakers – you know just one glance at the stage and you’ll either turn to salt or take one huge step closer to becoming just like your pervy uncle Clint, who’s probably in the balcony right now filming the routine for posterity. Or the three-year old with the thousand-yard stare who has no business being in public much less in a poodle skirt and bobbie socks in front of hundreds of strangers. She’s been there since dawn, with the other polka dot chain gang, and she’s consumed twice her weight in Sour Patch Kids and mini Krackle bars. Just as the music starts for her first number, Our Little Pumpkin gets shoved onstage, stares offstage while every adult points and yells at her, and then, mercifully, Pumpkin is yanked off by the dance instructor’s assistant, who patrols the stage like a Stalag 17guard.
Or the chubby kid who is, by far, the best dancer in the building but those peanut cluster bars taste sooo good after practice that you really can’t blame her. Or the poor jug-headed child with ears the size of manhole covers – sadly, no neon sunbonnet or tribal headdress will hide those appendages, and the crowd gasps whenever the child leaps, fearing she’ll take flight, those enormous wings on her head lifting her to the rafters. No dance recital would be complete without the little girl who just doesn’t have the beat, stumbling around like she’s had a few shots backstage, only the stiff tautness of the gold-lacquered bodice stretched across her belly keeping her from hitting the floor and staying there until “Natural Woman” ends and the guards drag her offstage.
Each dance is relentless in it persistent howl of bizarre mediocrity, and I find myself praying for Albanian separatists to burst through the doors, ready to take us all hostage – but they’d see the lack of rhythm, the ill-fitting costumes and the torturous interpretation of Hall and Oates’ “Maneater” and they’d hightail it out of there, their grenades and dignity still firmly intact.
There are some in the audience who seem to really be enjoying themselves – the same parents who never miss the new Kidz Bops CD and who think nothing of car windows slathered in stickers. There’s no doubt that if you’re cruising down the highway, cranking “Banana Phone” your lateral vision obscured by the many moods of My Pretty Pony, you can’t wait for Dance Recital season.
Another truth of these events is how often the dance instructors find themselves onstage as well. OK, we get it! You Love Dance! That’s why we drag our kids to your studio next to the GNC store at the mall near Osco Drug – because you love it so much. But do you need to find yourself in the middle of every other routine? Maybe you should stop shouting from the wings – you’re no better than the little league coach who tells every kid what to do on every pitch and batted ball. “Step two and shake your bum,” “Throw it to second base. SECOND BASE!” “Hop step two and sashay. Sashay! Come ON!” "Listen! Why won't you LISTEN?"
“Hey Mickey” followed by “Sea Cruise” followed by “Let’s Get This Party Started” followed by the theme song from The Aristocats . . . I’m sure this recital is being simulcast in Purgatory, and as the adults come out for the final dance – usually an awkward tap dance with our brave dance instructor and academy owner/operator leading the charge front and center – it strikes me. The only reason we’re doing this is because there are seven or eight grown women who won’t let go. They loved dance so much as children that they’ve created an entire universe in support of their habit – a universe filled with weekly lessons, absurdly priced outfits, cheap flowers, video cameras and gaudy lipstick, not to mention shoes, sequins, hairspray, leotards and a DVD to relive this horror any time we want. No one ever told them they really didn’t have any rhythm and that unless you’re on Broadway, sweetie, them tap shoes ain’t good for nothin’ but killing bugs. Just like the psycho soccer dads, loony hockey moms and third base coaches from hell, these people are doing this for themselves. The kids are just a means to an end. And if that entails you forking over hundreds of dollars and dragging your kid to lessons twice a week for 47 weeks a year while Pumpkin covers every last free space on that backseat window with a Strawberry Shortcake sticker, then so be it – that’s really your problem to handle – just don’t be tardy picking Pumpkin up or it’s a $15 late charge.
Well, I think my daughter’s done with dance. Sure, she’ll miss it a bit next fall, but by the time spring rolls around and she’s outside with mud in her toes and sun on her face, she’ll barely remember the forced labor two-step jamboree we made her endure last year. But, if in twenty years, as we find ourselves in a shouting match over Thanksgiving dinner, our little girl blaming the dance recital and our ignorance for her shortcomings as she shouts about how her Beachside Tabouli Shack business model would work if we’d only never let her dance in a recital, at least we’ll have the DVD.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Poppa Smurf and the Ten Amendments
There comes a point in every parent’s life when it dawns on you that your kids may need a little extra help after school. Mine came in a double dose this past week from my son, now a 12-year old sixth grader. The subject of the film, Raiders of the Lost Ark came up. We’d rented it and planned on watching the movie together. Sam asked for a quick plot summary, and I obliged, explaining that Han Solo is essentially trying to save the Ark of the Covenant from the Nazis just before World War II. Sam then asked, “What’s the Ark of the Covenant?” Wince number one.
I explained that the Ark was the sacred vault for the Ten Commandments. Sam paused, looked at me, and shook his head, smiling. “Dad, you mean the Ten Amendments. They’re called amendments.” Wince number two. In that one moment I thought back to a fall afternoon in 1992 on Long Island. I was coaching middle school football with a fellow teacher – Lou. Lou and I knew nothing about football, and as Lou was fresh off the campus of Holy Cross College, we spent lots of time talking about religion. On that afternoon, I told Lou that if I ever had kids, I wasn’t sure I’d make them go to Catholic school like I’d endured. Lou concurred but then warned me – “But what about all the stuff we learned? What about all the cultural references that everyone knows because of a religious education? Your kids will miss all of that.” I didn’t give it much thought until almost fifteen years later when my son dismissed my plot summary as the ramblings of an historically confused man. I guess it was better than saying that the Ark held the “Ten Condiments,” (Thou shalt mix horseradish and sour cream for a tangy, satisfying dip for baby carrots”), but still, it made me wonder if I’ve been setting the kid up for failure later in life.
My concerns only got worse just yesterday when I sat down for dinner and noticed a picture on the kitchen counter. It was of Poppa Smurf, and I wondered aloud who’d printed it up, sure that my kids have never seen an episode of The Smurfs, which is good, because other than The Power Rangers, never was the bar for American TV programming set so low. Sam admitted it was his, so I had to ask why he’d printed it up. “Poppa Smurf is a famous historical figure, and I thought it was cool, and I want to hang it up in my room.” Third and final wince.
I’ve got some work to do. I think I’ll start by explaining that Poppa Smurf was the one responsible for giving Han Solo the Ten Amendments for safe-keeping from the Blue Power Ranger, just after he parted the Peppermint Stick forest in Candy Land. Every journey starts with a first step, and mine starts here.
I explained that the Ark was the sacred vault for the Ten Commandments. Sam paused, looked at me, and shook his head, smiling. “Dad, you mean the Ten Amendments. They’re called amendments.” Wince number two. In that one moment I thought back to a fall afternoon in 1992 on Long Island. I was coaching middle school football with a fellow teacher – Lou. Lou and I knew nothing about football, and as Lou was fresh off the campus of Holy Cross College, we spent lots of time talking about religion. On that afternoon, I told Lou that if I ever had kids, I wasn’t sure I’d make them go to Catholic school like I’d endured. Lou concurred but then warned me – “But what about all the stuff we learned? What about all the cultural references that everyone knows because of a religious education? Your kids will miss all of that.” I didn’t give it much thought until almost fifteen years later when my son dismissed my plot summary as the ramblings of an historically confused man. I guess it was better than saying that the Ark held the “Ten Condiments,” (Thou shalt mix horseradish and sour cream for a tangy, satisfying dip for baby carrots”), but still, it made me wonder if I’ve been setting the kid up for failure later in life.
My concerns only got worse just yesterday when I sat down for dinner and noticed a picture on the kitchen counter. It was of Poppa Smurf, and I wondered aloud who’d printed it up, sure that my kids have never seen an episode of The Smurfs, which is good, because other than The Power Rangers, never was the bar for American TV programming set so low. Sam admitted it was his, so I had to ask why he’d printed it up. “Poppa Smurf is a famous historical figure, and I thought it was cool, and I want to hang it up in my room.” Third and final wince.
I’ve got some work to do. I think I’ll start by explaining that Poppa Smurf was the one responsible for giving Han Solo the Ten Amendments for safe-keeping from the Blue Power Ranger, just after he parted the Peppermint Stick forest in Candy Land. Every journey starts with a first step, and mine starts here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
