This is Girl Child

Also known as Smootch, Sweetie, Quack Quack and Fart Bubble.

Girl child has this thing about her. She's dramatic. Or, rather, Dramatic!  Coming as a surprise to exactly nobody among those who have met her, Girl child has recently quit school at the ripe old age of eight and embarked upon a career in the performing arts.  Or something like that.

She is hoping to one day make it all the way to Calgary.

She has joined a local youth theatre group.  Last Friday was the opening night for the play she has been cast in as a chorus member.  She performs in four or five songs, I'm not totally sure, they've kind of all blurred together at this point in a drawling montage of cowboy hats, swing skirts and fringe, but it seems like a lot of them for her collective ten minutes on stage during a two hour performance.

I think she has excelled during her collective ten minutes.  Being her mother I can't say too much without sounding a little biased but I will say, with as much humility as possible, that she is the most amazing awesome performer that has ever been. 

On a less personal note, the director did refer to her as a 'sassy spark' for her ta-ta shaking during some pseudo-feminist number.  I think that one day I'll have to include this early career director's praise in her career in my best selling memoirs of raising a famous actress.  The one that I write just before Girl Child writes her own where she declares me to be a beastly mother who swore too much and accuses me of damaging her psyche by writing about her (and her ta-tas) on the internet throughout her childhood.

 

I had no idea what I was signing up for when I took her to her first audition.  She's spent a hundred hours rehearsing over eight weeks.  I've been sewing bloomers and skirts and hemming and altering during my twenty (although it has been more like forty) mandatory committee hours.  Honestly, we've both enjoyed it, but, dude, my house is a wreck and my own projects been completely ignored.  Not to mention all of you.  Also I haven't been to derby practice in forever and am suffering from a lack of hitting people.

 

The show is almost halfway through it's eleven performances in ten days. 

The girl has now officially already worn more make up than I.  Ever.  Girl Child has promised to demonstrate to me how to properly apply mascara.  And then after she's going to show me how to shake my ta-tas.  I'm freaking out a little bit here.

On opening night I used a curling iron for the first time since the '80s.  I wasn't too sure, but I did ask one of the stage moms later, and it turns out that spraying the crap out of the hair with hair spray and then singing it with the hot iron is still an acceptable way to produce long lasting curls.  At least in theatre circles.  I feel vaguely proud that at least one of my skills developed in the '80s is still applicable.  I mean, besides learning to read.

(I introduced the idea of hair curling to Girl Child by saying, 'Time to make you look like you belong on Toddlers and Tiaras!' 

To which Girl Child asked, 'What the heck is that?' 

And I said, 'I'm not actually sure since never seen it.' 

So we watched a bit while I curled her hair.  After just a few minutes Girl Child turned to me and said, 'No, mom. Just. No.' 

Which is just fine by me.  She also, after smelling her hair burn, said that she'll hire a professional stylist as soon as she becomes famous and/or rich.  Also fine by me.  Hair is not one of my talents.)

Driving home after her opening night I hear an absolutely elated and exhausted Smootch saying from the back seat, 'Mom, I think I found what I want to do for the rest of my life.'

Perhaps, little Fart Bubble.