Dance Class Wars

My husband sometimes makes a practice of talking out of his ass. Case in point; Rachael was 10 months old when Jeff looked at me and said that there was no reason in the world why she couldn't be in the Nordstrom print ads. Having watched way too many E! True Hollywood Stories about child actors, I was completely against it.

My child is absolutely gorgeous, loves to sing (and unlike the rest of our tone-deaf family can carry a tune), can dance without looking like she's convulsing, and doesn't mind getting up in front of a small audience. However, I'm not too keen on the idea of whoring her whimsical kid instinct out to the highest bidder.

After many banters back and forth between my husband and I, we signed baby Rachael up with a local talent agency (who required a $100 retainer), got the headshots done (which was another $300), and got no calls (I mean zilch, zero, nada). Sometimes as a dig, if I'm feeling a bit bitchy, I'll ask Jeff how much interest that $400 would have earned in a college account by now. I haven't done that in quite awhile, because the whole "my kid could be a star" thought pattern hasn't reared it's ugly head until recently.

We signed Rachael up for gymnastics in March. She went for about a month and a half and got bored with it, so we signed her up for tap and dance classes. She went to two classes and absolutely hates it. My first thought is 'she tried it, she's done, time to move on'. Jeff has a bit of a different approach. Rachael loves to sing and dance, he tells me, so let's make her do the dance classes, she'll get used to it and love them.

All the while, Miss Rachael is telling me that she would to go to karate. Every kid loves to sing and dance, but not all want an audience or a stage. In a culture so obsessed with stardom, and living in SoCal, an area where if you don't have a modicum of stardom, you're not shit, I really don't want to encourage this camera-chasing behavior in my kid. If Rachael prefers kicking someone's ass in karate as opposed to dressing in pink tights and singing and dancing, that's fine with me. In fact, I'm downright proud!

The issue of dance class vs. karate still isn't resolved in the Punk in Suburbia household, so it may be awhile before we have a favorable resolution. Until then I'll be happy buying my kid little doctors lab coats and encouraging her to bandage the dogs then asking her to sing yet another rendition of "It's a Hard Knock Life".