Stage Presence

You can get out of a lot of parenting duties if you really want to. You can find a nanny to change diapers and take your kids to the park. You can hire a tutor to help them with their homework. You can bring in a maid to pick up all those Legos. (Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that you have to be a lottery winner to pull off the above but hey, it can be done.) What you can't get away from is the certainty that, before your kid puts on a cap and gown, you will have to park your tush a couple of hundred times in an uncomfortable seat and watch them perform. From Christmas concerts to baseball games; spelling bees to recitals, there's no escaping the fact that your presence will be required on a regular basis.

Not that this is a bad thing. Getting the chance to prove, once and for all, that your child is indeed the most talented human being on the planet is a worthwhile way to spend a couple of hours. Watching my daughter knock the audience's socks off when she belted out a Celine Dion-worthy rendition of a song or my son rip a forehand past an unsuspecting opponent are memories that I'll treasure forever.

But it doesn't always work out that way.

Sometimes you sit there on that cold, hard chair and watch your child falter. And there's nothing worse than that. More often than not, you end up suffering through two hours of less than scintillating entertainment just to catch your kid's two minutes of magic. You tell yourself you have to stay; that it would be rude to leave just as little Cody is getting ready for his clarinet solo. So, even though all you really want to do is grab your little darling and head home for that latest episode of Homeland, you stay.

This week, despite the fact that my own children are in their twenties and my future grandchild's arrival is months away, I found myself back on those hard chairs. . .twice. My nephew, about to exit Junior High, performed in both a jazz band concert and a production of High School Musical. While not everyone involved in the events had been blessed with his innate abilities (we're still trying to find something this kid can't do), you couldn't help but appreciate the time and effort that each of them had given, regardless of their talent level.

So there were a few missed notes; so there were a couple of missed lines; so some of them looked like they would rather be having a root canal. None of that mattered. They were all up there trying. They were all up there adding another life experience to their resumes. They were all in the game, not sitting on the sidelines. And I was full of admiration for all of them, especially the ones who would never get the lead; who would never get the solo.

I may have been better entertained but I've seldom had better teachers.