Recital Meltdown
I was watching TV the other day when a new GEICO commercial came on. A man in an office cafeteria is microwaving a burrito when the Swedish rock band Europe appears in a cloud of smoke singing, “It’s the Final Countdown!”
I don’t know if it’s a reflection of growing up in the 80s, or if the song if truly catchy, but my third son and I kept singing it over and over again for days. “It’s the final countdown, doo doo doooooooo do, do-do-do-do.” It didn’t matter if we were using the microwave or threatening to leave the older kids behind on the morning school run, anytime seemed like a good time for us to break out a little final countdown.
I hit recital week with all it’s crazy sauce and I changed the words of my new favorite tune to match my new reality. The song, “It’s the Final Countdown” became “It’s Recital Meltdown!” I don’t know about you, but “recital meltdown” pretty much describes the last few weeks before the curtain goes up for me.
A dance needs finishing, a costume needs shortening, and the theatre needs detailed lighting cues by midnight. This ballet girl has to choreograph a hip hop dance for 160 dads, the recital program has a random blank page and another senior is changing her senior solo song. We added a giant prop to opening number at the last minute (my brilliant idea), which required borrowing a trailer and two sets of stairs from the local theater department, a trip to Chicago for pick up and an army of dads to assemble.
This, of course, is not counting the extra trips my husband and I made to the regular schools this week to deliver forgotten homework, drop off dinners, and attend track meets. Every single activity from school to dance to sports to church is in high gear in our area during the month of May and my refrigerator looks like my gas tank. Empty.
It’s in these moments that we have to pull out our survival strategies. Schedule an extra meeting explaining everyone’s responsibilities for show week and delegate additional tasks. Finish the dance, pin the costume and email the cues. Skip the cooking, fill your gas tank and throw some spinach on a frozen pizza. Turn that blank page in the recital program book into an autograph page and staple the last of the prop together. Your kid will survive you don’t make a second trip to school to deliver the track uniform. Mine did. Apparently they have extras of those at the school for kids whose parents refuse to make a fourth trip to school in one day.
To quote one of my entrepreneurial heroes, Marie Forleo, “Everything is figure-out-able.” Breathe. Smile. You’ve got this. You are a professional. It really is “The Final Countdown” to showtime, so let’s roll!
Recital is not the only thing we are counting do to at More Than Just Great Dancing®. We are counting down the final 15 spaces available at Studio Owner University®.