February 25, 2002
DOWN HOME:
This is the stuff of your kids' lives
___This would be an interesting experiment: Before couples give birth to their first child, survey them about how they think this blessed event will change the way they spend their time. Then, poll them again 18 or 19 years later and see how close they came to the truth.
___If I were a betting man--which I'm not, of course--I'd put the farm on the line and bet they'd miss it by at least 552 miles. That's the distance from Lewisville to South Padre Island, where I never thought our family would spend a late-winter weekend.
MARV KNOX
Editor
___We journeyed to the tip of Texas for a drill team competition. I couldn't have conceived such a confab in the winter of 1984, when Lindsay was just a bundle of joy and diapers.
___Now, she and her 15-year-old sister, Molly, are Lewisville High School Farmerettes. Mostly, the Farmerettes perform at halftime of football games. But during the desolation of winter, when (sigh) high school football doesn't exist, they spend untold hours practicing for an annual drill team competition.
___This year, approximately 5 kazillion girls and 12 boys converged on the convention center at South Padre Island. Within a stone's throw of the Gulf of Mexico, they spent two days dancing, kicking, shaking pompons and waving their arms to the beat of everything from hip-hop techno-funk to "Amazing Grace."
___Sitting through a drill team competition reminds me of how a pilot once described flying a trans-Atlantic flight and landing in stormy weather--hours and hours of tedium culminating in a few minutes of sheer terror.
___No matter how good the other teams, it all starts looking and sounding the same. (OK, not the team that dressed like old ladies with walkers and jazz-danced to "Feel Like a Woman.") Except when your child is out there.
___Then your stomach turns upside-down and you feel your heartbeat in your eardrums. This is important stuff. Will they make their kicks? Will they stay in step? Will the judges catch that snazzy contagion that ends in the splits? And no matter what happens to everybody else, will your kid hit all her marks?
___Maybe you've never attended a drill team competition. But if you've raised a child, you've been there--in spirit, at least.
___Take piano recitals, please. Except for your own child's piece--which, by then, you've already heard 3,278,951 times--everything else is boring, with a capital -oring. Maybe you've been on the sidelines of an infinite number of baseball, soccer and basketball games, spelling bees, science fairs, concerts or whatever your child does with a cast of zillions.
___New parents couldn't envision how much time all this will take. And experienced parents couldn't describe to them how much fun it all is. Children are gifts from God, and this is the stuff of their lives.
___I'm sure gonna miss it when it's over.
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