Remember the "sometimes it pays to be playing without a full deck?" Well, here's where playing without a full deck will get you.
The cheer gym announces two shows for your daughter: May 4th and May 11th. You write them in THE calendar. The one on the actual wall and not part of the collage of sticky notes all over your countertop.
You tell YOUR whole family not to worry about attending the cheer show on May 4th. You figure there's one on May 11th, and by then the team will look a least a week better, so you attend SOLO.
On May 4th, after a marathon of softball games, you fly four towns over to attend cheer show only to be notified that the May 11th cheer show does not exist. THIS MAY 4th CHEER SHOW WILL BE THE ONLY CHEER SHOW. The ONLY cheer show your daughter has been preparing for since like November. Apparently somewhere between her broken arm, a Holy communion, and a few missed practices, the coaches decided on CANCELING the May 11th show.
This after showing up in the Raspberry Lightning team softball jersey, sunburn, and ballfield hair. The kind of hair you can't make pretty with even a bow the size of blue bedazzled boomerang.
Once you locate the cheer team, you see an array of blue, sparkly, eyeshadowed, glowstick lip glossed, curly-q hairlocked little drop dead diva girls. It is SHOWTIME. And your daughter looks like a cheerleader gone through the carwash.
Nevertheless, you realize she's at least ALIVE, though she only ate one chicken nugget and a banana en route. You spritz her up and send her out to the mat so you can detour through the back EXIT door and hunt down some last minute spectators. You don't even care at that point if it's the parking lot attendee or some random grandmother you take hostage from another family. You figure she won't even notice the difference. The little girls are all in blue and you are sure you can convince her that Avery IS in fact her great-granddaughter.
You call Nana and Papa. No answer.
You can't call Vavoe or Grampa because being the kind of senior class citizens they are, it would take them til next November to find the gym anyhow. Luckily, you remember this kid DOES have a father and a sister and they should be leaving the softball field right around half past whatever.
Dad picks up on first ring and he's promises to abandon his submarine sandwich AND a 'night' sleep to support his little girl. This after working GRAVEYARD. I give him just enough notice to provide him 35 minutes to make it to the cheer gym that is a good 50 minutes away.
Next, I make a mad dash to the nearest mall plaza to find some semblance of a congratulatory gift to the cheerleading star, this being her last day and all. Once I pull in the lot, I realize the only choices I have within two miles of the gym are a superette grocery and deli, a floor tile distributor, and a Hannaford.
I must note here that this Hannaford grocery store, 30 miles from my hometown is foreign to me. A foreign grocery store might as well be a foreign COUNTRY to me. It's as much fun as participating in the Amazing Race part 465. And I don't even have a partner.
But alas, I partake in the scavenger hunt for a bouquet of flowers, a stuffed cheer bear, or at least a package of junior mints. Those being for me.
I end up at the register with a sad display of purple lilacs leftover from Easter is my guess, a congratulations on your Bar Mitzvah card, or something close to it, and two thank you cards to the cheer coaches and skip out on the junior mints altogether.
As I leave the plaza, I have all of 8 minutes to make it back to the gym for cheer show, all the while sweating it out, hoping that Dad and Sister have already found some seats or at least kicked some other spectators out of theirs for the sake of our viewing.
No lie that I arrive right before the beginning credits, moments before the National Anthem, and the rest of the family files in as they are announcing the MINI CHEER TEAM event. I had even planned on making some big scene to cause a delay in the show, knowing that the MINI CHEER TEAM was first up. I'd either have to start convulsing in aisle 11 or notify all toddlers under the age of three that if they ran to centerstage they could meet the DoodleBops firsthand!
Your daughter shoots you a big smile, softball hair and all, and the routine begins. We even caught a video in which you will witness deep heavy breathing, not by any cheerleading performer, of course, but from the two idiot parents in the back row that can't keep a single date straight to save their own idiot lives.
All in all, the cheer show lasts about THREE whole minutes but had taken off a good THREE years of your life.
We are now home and recuperating from the Cheer Show disaster. And if you know me at all, you know I have already checked each and every email and notification to find out where the cancellation was, because I have already struck out 425 times this year alone, and I just can't stomach yet another failure.
Furthermore, I have committed myself to organizing the calendar a bit more, purchase myself some junior mints, but most importantly, to the nearest mental facility. GOOOOO Prozac!
half-a-mom
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