Because I’m a moron, I normally tend to be understanding of moronic behavior in other people.
I’ll see someone do something stupid, and instead of laughing or commenting on the stupid move, I will stop and say to myself, “Yeah, I can see myself doing that.”
It’s sort of a been-there, done-that feeling.
But over the weekend, I saw some folks do something that got underneath even my moronic, sympathetic skin. Perhaps it was where I was that sort of set me on edge. Or perhaps I’m just getting grouchy in my old age. Either way, I found myself muttering to myself this weekend more often than normal.
I spent part of Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at our 11-year-old daughter Emma’s dance recital. Over the years, I’ve grown to accept the fact that one of my roles as a parent is to attend Emma’s dance recitals. I’ve actually grown to not only accept the fact that I need to attend her dance recitals, I’ve grown to enjoy them. Because I often take Emma to dance class and because I often pick her up from dance class, I’ve grown to appreciate just how hard Emma and the other girls work to get ready for their recitals. I used to think that playing organized sports was hard work. I mean, I loved playing high-school basketball, but it was a lot of work. But I know now that I had it easy compared with what Emma and her friends go through to prepare for their dance recitals. And when someone works that hard, the least I can do is drag myself to an occasional recital.
It’s important to note, however, that dance recitals involve more than one dance class. A typical dance recital in a town like Carthage consists of more than 100 dancers ranging in age from 3 to 40. Since those 100 dancers have parents, grandparents, siblings, spouses, aunts, uncles, friends and neighbors, it’s not unusual for a recital to attract upward of 1 million people.
OK, a million might be a slight exaggeration, but you get my point.
So knowing that, it drives me crazy when someone arrives for a 7 p.m. dance recital at, say, 7:10 p.m. If these late-arriving folks would just realize their error and find a piece of wall in the back of the full auditorium, their tardiness wouldn’t drive me crazy. But most late arrivals don’t do that. What they do is slowly wander down the aisles of the auditorium with shocked and sometimes angry looks on their faces.
“What? We arrive 10 minutes late for a dance recital and there are no seats available? How can this be?” the looks on their faces say.
You would think that once these late arrivers saw that most of the seats were taken, they would give up and walk to the back of the auditorium. But you would also think that people would figure out that Rush Limbaugh makes up 70 percent of what he says.
Nope, what the late arrivals do is wander up and down the aisles expecting, I guess, someone to jump up and say, “Even though I arrived at the dance recital an hour before it started to make sure I had a seat, I will gladly give up my seat for you, who arrived 10 minutes late.”
This never happens.
What happens is the late arrivers eventually find two vacant seats. Of course, these two vacant seats inevitably are in the middle of the auditorium, in the middle of a long row of seats. So then what happens is the late arrivers force half the folks in the row to stand up so they can slowly and deliberately make their way to the open seats. What that means is many people who arrived at the recital an hour early so they could see their child, grandchild, sibling, spouse, niece, friend or neighbor dance will wind up missing their child, grandchild, sibling, spouse, niece, friend of neighbor dance because half a row of people had to stand up to let two moronic late arrivers sit down.
There are other things morons do at dance recitals that drive my crazy too, but I won’t mention them here.
I mean, I don’t want to sound bitter or anything.
