Grease Is Not The Word

Ever since the boy started wrestling he has become less and less interested in the performing arts.

I LOVE the performing arts and I’m one of those moms who really like to see her kid on the stage. Especially one who is really, really good at it. He’s a natural, really. He likes music and he likes singing but recently he’s become a lot less enthused about being on stage.

After his duet last fall, he decided he didn’t like singing and dancing at the same time. I’m not sure why. He really couldn’t articulate it to me. But he did so well!

I hope his musical theater teacher never reads this.

He wouldn’t let me post photos of his last musical number. He did relent after I showed him this photo and said, “Pleeeeeese.” He squinted at it and since you can’t possibly tell that it’s him in the center of the photo:) he said, “Okay. But that’s the only one.” Pssst, he’s directly under the E and the N.

I have some other really good photos of the musical that will forever live in my hard drive never to see the light off day.

The spring musical this year is Grease. Grease! I LOVE Grease! After I saw the movie as a girl I played the soundtrack over and over. I begged him to try-out.

“Come on, you’ll like it!”

“No.”

“Just at least tryout. There’s no harm.”

“No.”

I thought perhaps he thought his friends on the team would make fun of him.

“You can wait until after wrestling if you want.”

“No.”

Part two of this story is this.

My precious boy was having problems keeping his grades up this quarter. I believe that it was because he was spending so much time with wrestling and not enough time on his school work. He is however, gifted intellectually, which in his case works against him because he doesn’t have to try that hard to do well. You know what I mean? Even so, he’s managed to make the honor roll each quarter. We have given him the “Imagine what you can do if you really tried” speech. I think it’s gone in one proverbial ear and out the other.

Our school district came out with this great new grading system this year. It lets parents keep a closer eye on the kids’ progress, and not get “surprised” at the end of the quarter.

It’s all the better to let us micro-manage you my dears.

So I was starting to worry. We know he’s taking a big work load, AP course, honors this and that…We have imparted on him the importance of grades, that tenth grade was an important year, that cumulative averages are important, that this counts! You’re tuning out too aren’t you?

As I continued to get emails showing a downward slide in grades, I was beginning to think that no come-back was in sight. So I told him that if he didn’t make the honor roll, he was going to have to try out for the musical.

And that was that.

And you probably know the ending to this story…we got his report card and he made the honor roll. He pulled it out. Somehow he pulled it out. And I believe it took a little bit of effort.

See what you can do if you really tried? But now I won’t see him in Grease. Ugh, it’s hard being a parent.

Hosted by Cecily and Amy