Years ago, when I was doing Stage Crew at my first school, every year we had an auditorium rental that made me a lot of money, but somewhat disgusted me. I can’t remember the name of it, but it was for some big dance school that had their annual recital/awards program at our school. We spent from right after school until about 10 PM on Friday setting up, and all day Saturday (like from 6 AM to 11 PM) doing the show and cleaning up. I got paid something like $20 an hour, and other than helping set up and clean up, all I had to do was run out for lunch one time, and check in on my (paid) stage crew kid every hour or so.
The problem with it was that it involved (mostly) girls, starting around 4 years old, all dressed up like Barbie Dolls, makeup, bright red lipstick, doing dances that the teenagers pulled off well, but were kind of creepy when done by 5 year olds. I called it the JonBenét Ramsey Weekend. There were about 500 kids involved, which also meant 500 stage moms. You know all the rumors about stage moms? Well, there is a reason for those rumors; they’re all true. Not for all the moms, but a big chunk of them. Fortunately I spent most of my time in my classroom, the control booth or the Principal’s office, so I could keep contact to a minimum. But despite having a trash can every 10 feet or so, we always ended up with an orchestra pit full of trash we swept down to the front of the auditorium. And not a single year went by that I didn’t find at least one dirty diaper stuffed under one of the seats.
Anyway, there must have been something like that going on at one of the schools nearby, because I saw at least a dozen or so JonBenét-wannabe’s coming into the Chevron tonight. I looked at my co-worker, who has a 3 month old daughter, and asked him if he would ever dress up his daughter like that. I won’t quote his response, but rest assured it ended with “NO”.
Sometimes, Memory
4 comments:
Oh good lord. Don't get me started on little girl pageants. Talk about creepy. My cousin does that to her daughter. They're horrible people.
Oh, I did some research on this kind of thing for an academic team practice subject early in the year. Did you know there's a whole reality show based on baby beauty pageants (aka turning preschoolers into prostitutes)?
And people wonder why girls and women are so much more likely to go to extremes over their looks than they were even 20 years ago. Honestly, some of those girls are getting plastic surgery on noses and ears before they leave grade school. Does anyone honestly believe they're going to concentrate on developing their brains with that kind of focus from their moms?
A friend of mine at church manages a 7-11, so I figured he could relate to some of the stuff you write about. I told him about this post and he agreed (his exact adjective of choice was "sick"), so I asked him about his more "colorful" customers. He says the most interesting people come in at 2:00 or 3:00 AM and the transgendered folks who are regulars tend to be the most colorful.
Perhaps someday you'll get to blog about such a thing. I'm sure you can hardly wait. :)
Fortunately, I don't usually work past 10 in the evening, and we close at 1 anyways, so I don't get to see the colorful graveyard people. But back in my 20's, when I worked at Free Wheeler, we spent a lot of time, after work (1 - 4 in the morning)down at the 5th So Denny's (300 West). Saw a lot of colorful people back then, and the best was bar rush on Halloween.
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