The variety show experience

Symantha and two of her friends had been talking about being in the school variety show since last year. When the time for auditions finally arrived, they were so excited. They had some practices at our house, coached by Aunt Stephanie the “professional singer”. This was SO helpful in getting them prepared, and we were all singing Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” for weeks before the show. As if we hadn’t already heard that song more times than we could count.

They did great on the audition. I shouldn’t really call it an audition, since all the kids make it in:). But it is still great practice. The only bummer is that it was possibly the least organized thing I have ever been a part of. There were rehearsals set up for weeks before the show, but they were pretty much a waste of time. We had some of our own rehearsals instead. However, there were all sorts of microphone issues, and it wasn’t all figured out by the night of the show. More on that later.

We took the girls shopping for matching shirts, which was fun. They found the perfect glittery outfits and were so cute together.

There was a lot of disorganized chaos the night of the show, so the girls weren’t able to use the track we had practiced to. Since there was another girl doing the same song (awesome, right?), they ended up using her version. The problem was, our version had a very quiet track of the words in it, so if the girls lost their place, they would be able to find it quickly again. Since we had done it so many times, I figured they would be fine if we used the other version, and there wasn’t really another option anyways.

So, they began their performance well, smiling and doing exactly as they had practiced. Except that Symantha’s microphone wasn’t turned on until I began to notice and pointed it to her from the crowd. She turned it on just in time for her solo… and then half way through her part she completely lost the words. They all kind of looked at each other blankly, and after some awkward moments, caught on to the chorus and finished the song. Symantha was faking a smile at the end with tears in her eyes. I was SO proud of how she held it together! She went back to her seat with the performers and started crying, but her friends were so encouraging. I went over to check on her and they were totally building her up. She bounced back after a bit, and her aunts and I told her helpful stories about how things like this have happened to all of us at one time or another. It will give her a great story to tell her own kids one day:)

We celebrated the whole experience with ice cream at Dairy Queen after the show. It seemed to make everything much better.

She is already talking about what she might want to do for the talent show next year. Which, fortunately, will be run by a completely different person and not be the chaotic mess that it was this year. The good thing is that most of the chaos went right over the girls’ heads and they didn’t really notice it. It provided some good experience and life lessons for Symantha, so I am still glad she did it. And I am thankful she had some great friends to go through the process with. They even prayed together before the show, with one of their grandparents. Pretty cool:)