Thursday, May 03, 2007

The Dance of Life


I don't know if I've broken this news to everyone, and I'm fairly certain that I haven't, but my 11 year old son is taking dance lessons. We started him in it at the beginning of the school year since he needed some sort of exercise and hadn't picked anything for himself. He didn't want anyone to know initially, so I kept his secret so as to avoid any embarrassment that he might have about it. He has wanted to drop it a number of times, but we the parents have made him stay in.

One of the good things about being a male dancer is that the studios are so starved for boys in their classes that they can take as many classes as they like for the price of one. So besides the "required" ballet, tap, jazz, my son has also taken a hip hop class and an all boys (exercise) class. At the beginning of the calendar year I gave my son the chance to drop out. I told him that he had done it long enough to satisfy us and that if he wanted to quit now or ever then it was his decision. He thought about it for a while and decided that he had done it this long and wanted to see how much further he could go. I have to admit I was surprised. I had already made plans for that additional money every month, but oh well.

Since then he has been in a better mood about going and has even decided to be in the recital next month. He did not want to do the ballet routine, but did want to do tap and was asked to be in the performance of another class. Since their doing "Batdance" he was on board. He even gets to dress up as a villain and probably get his ass kicked by Batman.

This all being said, I was in the dance studio waiting for my son's practice with the Batman group to end when BIG weather hit last night. Tornado sirens were going off, rain was flying horizontally, and the power went out for a ten/fifteen minutes. The younger kids were getting fairly worried and I started thinking about how I was going to have to rebuild this land as one of the only survivors with the help of the dance instructors. It was pretty great. My son apparently had the same idea as he had spotted and started chatting up one of the moms. A very hot mom. I embarrassedly pulled him away from her and explained the process of calling dibs to him.

Some lessons don't get learned as quickly as others though and I had to pull him away from her about five more times before the weather let up enough for us to head home. She seemed to get a kick out of it, but I don't think it was right of her to use him to get to me. I'm not that kind of dad.

24 comments:

Nate said...

I love that kid.

I loved him when I would carry him around the mall and hot african-american women would assume he was mine and come up and talk to me.

Now I just need to get him into bars with me and let him break the ice.

Q said...

So did he understand 'dibs' when you explained it to him. That is a really important life lesson.

Dagromm said...

I believe his words were,

"Screw you old man. She's digging me. I make the rules now!"

Nate said...

When I come to visit will I find you wandering around outside, waiting for scraps to fall your way? It's tough being demoted from the alpha-wolf.


Luckily, I've never had that problem. My wife knows exactly who is charge....and I follow orders. And the goldfish knows exactly who is in charge, so I follow those orders too.

Cyber D said...

When he gets into highschool and starts bringing home his hot girlfriends that could pass for 22 years old, that will be the epitomy of "happy-sad" for Dagromm.

Dagromm said...

Gyuss - Not this year, but I can see that as a very real possibility.

Cyberman - That is the upside of signing him up for dance.

Q said...

Dagromm, so your son now makes the rules?

heather said...

and g-man was worried about your street cred?? ~what~ street cred?

*lqtm*

Chillax said...

The apples don't fall too far from the tree. I'll never forget bringing Pebbles, my high school girlfriend, home one time to visit. A six or seven year old Dags took the opportunity to wrap her up in a great big bear hug. Which was cute except that he grabbed her from behind and had his face totally buried in her a$$. He was a grinning little dude when we finally got him peeled off of her.

plug said...

I am so thrilled that Dags, Jr. is dancing!! If I ever make it to NS, I plan to enroll Sandbox in some dance classes. He's shown real aptitude and interest. Maybe the cousins could have a dance-off in December...?

Nate said...

Heather, you know I'm gangster

Dagromm said...

heather - My street cred was never in doubt.

chillax - Your banned from the blog. Now go!

Plug - I can barely deal with the doctor's bills from his last dance off. I didn't say he had an aptitude for it just some level of enthusiasm.

Gyuss - You know!!!!

Nate said...

Based on Chillax's story, I would have expected Dagromm to grow up to be heterosexual.

What happened?

Churlita said...

Shit. I have comment performance anxiety. EVeryone else's comments are so funny and so wrong, all at the same time. I can't compete.

Dagromm said...

Gyuss - I'm completely hetero unless it's for money, then you know, whatever.

Churlita - That's funny. That's happens to me all the time on other people's blogs. That's when I turn into the Chris Farley talk show character from SNL.
eg. Remember that time you were in Die Hard? That was awesome.

heather said...

g-man, just how does a face buried in ass determine sexuality?

chillax, you're dags brother?! that explains sooo much. :-)

plug said...

Heather - checking in as Dagromm's (and Chillax's)sister. There are more of us around as well ...

Dagromm said...

Aaaaaahhhhhh!!!! My family's outing themselves!!

fringes said...

Where was I yesterday? I missed this whole thing.

Goo said...

Great. Now I'm going to spend the whole day trying to figure out the correct Emily Post wording for a family coming out party invitation.

Just tell me now, is it formal and will there be a reception?

Dagromm said...

fringes - I was wondering where you were too. I came to the conclusion that you were mad at me. Or Q, but I would understand that.

goo - Is anything in our family ever formal? Remember you're asking the guy who got married in Vegas in under five minutes.

fringes said...

I was away from my PC most of the day now that I think about it. If I'm mad at you, I won't show it by not blogmenting.

Dagromm said...

fringes - I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

heather said...

plug, for some reason i got right away that you were related to dags.
goo, are you a part of the dags family tree too or just worried about invitations? (lmao, a family outing party! could you imagine? now imagine it redneck style! lmmfaro!!)
dags, it would be a good thing cause not only would ~you~ know what you did but so would everyone else. which serves two purposes. it allows us to get mad at you for pissing off lady fringe and, it lets us know what ~not~ to do.