DOWN HOME:
Dads get a kick from imitating daughters
___"Well, at least I don't look like you," Lindsay consoled herself, with good humor but without serious regard for my feelings. "Maybe nobody will realize I belong to you."
___Kids these days. They really know how to hurt a guy.
___But in Lindsay's case, I fully understand the sentiment.
___Several other fathers of Farmerettes and I have been practicing for the big Dads' Routine at Spring Show. The Farmerettes are the drill team at Lewisville High School. Spring Show is sort of like an end-of-school recital, mostly featuring the Farmerettes in various groupings. But since the girls have to change costumes, Ms. Fields, the director, allows other groups to perform, just to space out the time between the "real" performances.
___And so George, dad of Jessica, kicked at the chance. For three years, he's been wanting to put together a group of dads who will swallow their pride, dress up like Farmerettes and put on a Farmerette-style routine for the amusement of one and all.
___"The object is to embarrass the girls without embarrassing ourselves," George told the other dad/Farmerettes at our first rehearsal.
___Entire cities have fallen into the bowels of the earth straddling fault lines less shaky than that premise. Besides, how George defines "embarrass" never will be written in any dictionary in the English language.
___But a dad will do for his daughter what a soldier never would do for a king. So, I've been fitted for my Farmerette uniform, and I've dedicated my "spare" time--mostly driving in the car with the tape-deck cranked up--to memorizing movements to the great disco classic "It's Raining Men."
___When I first heard about this gig, I was told the dads would do a "stand routine"--basic hand movements the Farmerettes perform to bouncy band music in the stands at football games.
___"Sounds easy enough," I thought, gullibly if not insanely.
___Only after signing on did I learn we would do four sets of high-kicks. And only after we started rehearsing did I learn the high-kicks were easy compared to fast-paced, complicated hand motions. Let's just say I'll never watch the Farmerettes in the stands the same way again.
___Ironically--and that's exactly the word for it--I thought about living a healthy spiritual life the other day as I worked on the long mid-song hand segment. Watching someone else live a Christ-like life is a poor substitute for the real thing. Only when you jump into real-life situations and attempt to apply Jesus-kind of actions can you really experience what Christianity is all about. And that's even harder than getting the sequence for the "Happy Hands" stand routine down pat.
___Spring Show is coming soon. If all goes well, I may tell you about it. And if you never hear another word, just pretend this subject never came up.
___
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