Jumping Through Hoops

Confidence is something you're born with.

Last week, I received an email that suggested my son had signed up to hula hoop in his elementary school talent show.

Now, it couldn’t have been my son, because my son has never hula hooped in his life, let alone seen a hula hoop. But, it turns out, he at least liked the idea and felt he could master it quickly. Like, two weeks from last Wednesday “quickly.”

My first reaction was to text my husband to see if he’d authorized the trial. He hadn’t. I then emailed the teacher to be sure it was, in fact, my Ted that had signed up, even though there are no other kids named Ted in her class. She wrote back to both assure me that it was my son, but also that this happens all the time, and she’s had dozens of emails today asking, for example, where kids learned to roller skate and if she’s teaching them how to train dogs.

No one signed up a trained chicken, so at least we were safe there.

That afternoon, when he piled into the car after school, I asked him about it. He also assured me that this was all intention, and that he fully believed he was going to audition for the school talent show, doing the hula hoop to Jimmy Buffett’s “Fins” wearing a Hawaiian shirt. The hula hoop would also have to light up.

His brother, who was also hearing this for the first time, decided it would be a duet. His sister, who won’t be left out of anything, quickly made us a family act, though she preferred Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off.”

I feel like this isn’t just a personal crossroads, but a parenting crossroads. Like, I can quash this dream, or pretend to ignore it until they’re humiliated, but the truth is, they’re in Kindergarten, so no one’s going to think this is embarassing — embarassment should come later, with puberty, and its not something I really want to tell my kids is coming. Like the end of summer vacation. Or taxes. If anything, it’ll teach them to unreasonably expect that all of their half-assed performances from here on out will be met with raucous applause, and I’d rather that be the disappointing part of this, not that their mother is always going to be there to kill their glorious dreams of hula hoop superstardom.

And, quite frankly, who am I to be embarassed secondhand? I’ve done a lot work in school unintentionally. A Kindergarten hula hoop dance is not, say, wearing coke-bottle glasses, a posture corrector, and a two-story orthodontic appliance to ever day of fifth grade. Even that, it wasn’t intentional. I was naturally a hot mess. And growing up meant growing to love that person; trying to change who you are just breeds the kind of happiness that haunts you, because you can’t quite put your finger on why everything is fabulous but nothing is satisfying.

I bought four hula hoops at Target, which meant that I had to stand in the Target aisle and test them for the required light-up feature — and I hope they captured that on security camera, even more than I hoped they’d seen that time my daughter came running around the corner at top speed into the toothpaste aisle and ran straight into the cart handle, providng that I didn’t abuse my child, she absolutely abused herself.

The first attempts were unsuccessful but hilarious, and within around 15 minutes, Ted felt comfortable enough with the hula hoop to ask to film his own instruction video, featured below for those of you who wrongfully assumed that hula hoops must go around your waist, and must continue to circle around to serve the purpose of showcasing the talent. Some might say that he was using the hula hoop as a gimmick to get into the talent show to dance, and some would be right — and the hula hoop angle is smart. Always have a gimmick.

The confidence is really what’s astounding. I think we forget that there was a time in our lives where we could just do anything, because nothing seemed off limits — physically, mentally, spiritually. It was all just available if you tried hard enough. No boundaries, no requirements, no self-consciousness. Just ambition and joy. And I can’t steal that. Heck, if I could keep the world from stealing that from my kids forever, I’d pay just about any price.

The audition is a week from Wednesday, and you’ll absolutely stay updated. For those of you who’d like to attend this talent show, where serious children with serious talents will be downbilled after my not-at-all coordinated children launch their own version of the Partridge Family, I’m sure we can make arrangements.

Keep a lookout for a recipe Friday and an audio surprise coming later this week! Since the children harvested my tomatoes three weeks too early, it’s Fried Green Tomato time, with remoulade sauce and better-than-Chuy’s jalapeno ranch sauce, because if I had to buy that ever time I wanted it, I’d have already blown the subscription money.

And now, the hula hoop tutorial.