What I’ve Been Looking For

Last year, when our church announced that there was going to be a talent show, Bart signed us up. Unfortunately, he didn’t actually have anything in mind to perform and I didn’t have any brilliant ideas either (also, I usually don’t really love talent shows).

In my family, you do not perform unless you really have something worth performing. I remember my dad and a few of his friends doing a Beatles song when I was about 12 or 13. They rolled their suit pants up, cut their ties to look really skinny, wore these hilarious wigs, and made guitars out of cardboard and various nuts and bolts. It was very awesome.

A day or two before the talent show, we realized it might easily be the most hilarious thing in the world to do one of the song and dance numbers from “High School Musical.” The main reason we thought it would be so great is because our church has about fifty bazillion children (last year, I heard we had 70 ages 3 and under). We also knew that practically every child there would know “High School Musical” backwards and forwards.

But at that point, it was too late to pull it off. Next year.

About a month ago, the sign-up sheet for this year’s talent show was passed around and this time we signed up, knowing exactly what we were going to do.

We rented HSM from the library and spent several evenings in front of the TV, with all the furniture pushed out of the way, learning the choreography.

After the first evening, it seemed like maybe we’d bitten off more than we could chew. Was there any way we could learn this whole thing before the show?

Then, on Monday, we tried running through the whole thing. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that we knew it all. All of it! Hoorah!

Last night was the big performance. I wore a brightly colored sequined skirt, with big flashy earrings and sparkly high heels (rubberbanded around my feet so they wouldn’t fall off mid-jazz square) and Bart wore a bright shirt. We’d made amazingly good-looking microphones out of toilet paper tubes (covered in white paper) and frosted silver Christmas balls. We had our CD with the song on it and a friend all prepped to cue the music.

As we got closer to our turn, I started getting a little nervous – was this really going to be as hilariously awesome as I hoped?

We did the whole number and got quite a bit of laughing and cheering, but frankly, I was in such a fog of concentration that I hardly noticed. I was too worried about forgetting a vital step or falling off of my high heels.

The show went on and we went back to our seats, where my hands continued shaking for a good ten minutes.

Afterwards, though, we were mobbed by people telling us how hilarious it was and asking how long it had taken to learn it. And when we went to B and Ralphie’s later on and watched the video, I was amazed by how loud the cheering was and what a ridiculous amount of laughter we generated.

And by “we,” I clearly mean “Bart,” because that man stole the show.