The Ballet
My wife is officially in the holiday spirit. Yesterday, we attended my niece Audrey’s ballet show at Central Forsyth High School. The dancers ranged in age from 6-year olds to high school seniors. Audrey is a thin vine disguised as an eighth-grader who likes to dance and it shows.
The skills of the dancers ranged, of course, and one notices these things even trying not to, but the dancers who drew my attention all had one thing in common – they smiled.
One of the tiniest dancers, who lost her balance before the others, turned left when all others turned right, drew me in, not for the entertainment value, not for the cuteness factor (she had both), but for the joy in her smile. Pure joy. When you like what you’re doing, people watch you, root for you, applaud for you.
Before you hand out the Uncle-of-the-Week Award, know that this was my first time watching Audrey whose danced for years. And it was considerably easier to turn off yesterday’s OSU-Maryland game than this Saturday’s OSU-Michigan. Lucky Audrey.
Just this week in class, a musically astute physics student of mine asked what my favorite Nutcracker song was. Kids often ask for my favorite this or that. But the Nutcracker? A first. I couldn’t name a single song, though arcane as this knowledge might be, I still couldn’t admit it. He let me off the hook and asked, “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”? That’s the one.
“Good morning,” I’ll say to my first two classes of the day. On a good day, three kids will return the greeting. “Let’s try that again,” I’ll say, “Good morning.” Half the class responds this time. One day last week, I said “Let’s try that again,” and left the room for a second. I returned through the door on the run, kept running through to the rear of the classroom and helped myself to a student’s baggie of dry Frosted Flakes, threw my head back and dumped a stream of flakes into my mouth, catching maybe half, throwing the baggie aside, and said, “Good morning.” A resounding Good morning from the class.
That’s me smiling.