It was quite a few years ago that I had to make one of those life changing decisions. I had already started a family, of sorts, and I had to choose, did I want to be one of those hands on fathers who was always helicoptering over my young children’s every growth spurt, or did I want to continue my own career as a mid-level ballet dancer, breaking my ass in small and dirty midwestern towns, barely making enough to pay the rent, much less pay for diapers for 17 ever growing children, at the time the choice seemed obvious.
So, here I remain in Honey Bucket Louisiana, in some terrible motel with no HBO, waiting for the kids to gather around the computer at their new-dads wonderful house in some great place in a gated community I have grown quite jealous of, stretching to perform tonights ballet version of what is basically a 20 minute Doctor Pepper commercial, or it may as well be for these yokels who will be as mildly entertained as they are most nights by their own farting. Oh sure, I get paid about 35 cents per pirouette. Of course, the joy I do get when at parties I am the lone ballet dancer, I do have mild bragging rights, I am but a freak, a middle aged ballet dancer in a world filled with technology millionaires and texting nimrods who seem to control the universe.
Sure I could have stayed and done the whole hands on father thing, but dancing has always been my passion and if there is one thing Rush Limbaugh has taught me it is follow your passion. I think that was what Rush Limbaugh taught me, because about the same time Rush was working through his Oxy addiction, I was rehabbing from my first full knee and hip replacement surgery. By the time I was able to focus and begin my dancing career with bionic parts, I believe Rush had moved on to complete hate for anything not obese and white, while I on the other hand had moved to the lowest tier of the dance circuit, shaking my elder money maker for the likes of the Duck Dynasty types, filling folding audience chairs and toothlessly smiling and applauding the scantily clad female dancers and screaming “faggot” at me for just stepping on the stage with a codpiece and a smile.
So, while I was Skyping my children this morning, my youngest son little Pontious (the most obnoxious one and in my family there is a devastating competition for that particular prize) asked me, “daddy, why do you always Skype wearing a pink lady dress?”
Oh, how the young never seem to have an edit button. Sure I wanted to tell the little twerp that this was my work clothes, just like his wealthy step-dad wore thousand dollar suits to his luxurious office every day, I wore this tutu as my official uniform and even though we were close to fifteen hundred miles apart, I could see his and every other one of my children roll their eyes in unison, as if a middle aged man in a pink tutu was unheard of in their gated community. Actually, a middle aged man is illegal in their gated community, which I found out the hard way last Christmas, when I made an unscheduled visit to the kids and was immediately arrested by the Mayberry police for “trespassing with intent to shake money maker in gay attire.” Which was not very Christmassy at all, when you think about it.
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