Welcome to Dance

I'm one of those. You know those crazy ladies. Dance Moms. Yep.

I've put make-up on my 3 year old. A lot of make up. Blue eye shadow, red lipstick, mascara, heavy blush. STAGE make-up. Now she's old enough to do it herself. Yeah! And I've been known to say- "Kaylee, honey, you need more lipstick. No, it needs to be darker, redder."

Today I did the quintessential dance mom thing. I stood in line to buy recital tickets. Well, sort of. Actually, my chair stood in line.

Ticket sales started at 9am. I arrived at 8am. There were four cars in the parking lot and four chairs in line by the door. So I added my chair to the line and went back to sit in my nice warm car and read. My chair didn't seem too unhappy there in the drizzling rain- I didn't even take it out of its bag- just leaned it against the wall like the four chairs before it.

The next hour was an interesting experience in human behavior. Everytime a new car would pull into the parking lot, everyone would look up from their books and watch to see if the occupant would get out a chair. If a chair joined the line everyone would go back to their books. The 14th person created a little bit of a stir around 8:40. She didn't have a chair. (Collective gasp!) But she quickly improvised by placing a large stick against the wall at the end of the line. Number 15 borrowed an umbrella about 5 minutes later and that too joined the line.

Then at 8:55am a newbie arrived. She walked up to the door and turned the handle. What was she thinking? Everyone jumped from their cars and took their respective places next to their chairs. She looked at me with a question on her face.

"Um, how does this work? This is our first year."

My response, a little sheepishly: "Well, everyone puts their chairs in line and then in a few minutes they'll start selling tickets."

She headed toward the back of the line, so I charitably added:

"Welcome to Dance."