Well, we’re here! Claire’s dance nationals are finally upon us.  She and I packed up and headed south to Tampa.

As I’ve said in previous blogs, I love watching Claire and her dance teams perform. They are delightful, age appropriate and so much fun to cheer on. It’s the other teams I dread watching.

The teams, like the one, who danced to the song “Slumber Party Girls” where one of the lines goes “You can be my homie. I’ll make you wanna do me.” The girls dancing to the song were no more than 10 years old, gyrating their hips like they were well trained strippers. It was a horrendous spectacle to watch…a train wreck, if you will ~ one that, try as I might, I just couldn’t look away from. I could only stand there with my mouth hanging open, in horror, and watch as the girls shimmied, shook and moved their tiny little, prepubescent bodies in a shockingly suggestive manner.

I talked to Claire after that performance and asked her what she thought. Her response was dead on…”It was scary,” she said. I asked her what she meant and she said that the dance didn’t seem “safe.” Claire went on to tell me that it one of the reasons she loves dancing for Ms. Barbara and Ms. Jenn; they keep her, and all of their dancers, safe.  They do it by not pushing the boundaries of complete and total impropriety.

What really got me at the end of Claire’s last dance competition is that “Slumber Party Girls” was rewarded with an overall first place win in their category…that means the judges rewarded the teachers and the dancers for a horrifically inappropriate dance routine. The judges rewarded teachers of prepubescent girls for teaching them early on in life to become “private dancers,” strippers and all manner of inappropriate “dancers.”   I’m glad Claire sees the brilliance in having the adults around her keeping her safe.

Oh, for the love of my children….