Tin Man Talent

Friday was the school Talent Show and this year I made all four of my kids enter. My reasoning was they're every bit as untalented as many kids in America and if I had to sit through three hours to watch one, I may as well watch all of them. Kidding aside, this is my favourite school event of the year.  As with anything to do with kids; you laugh, you cry.

Zach and Cy: "Today I don't feel like doing anything"

Cy and Zach prepare to go on..

Cy sang Bruno Mars' Lazy Song with his friend Zach, Tallulah sang Bruno Mars' "Just the Way You Are" with her friend Elza, dressed as boys. Jackson was one of the MCs and I made Harley pick a poem to recite and didn't realise until we watched him that it was only four lines.

Elza and Tallulah

MC Jackson waits his turn..

Seeing those bright lights and floorboards bought back memories of my finest (well, only) hour performing the Tin Man solo in Mrs Shirley Dibble's Ballet School production of The Wizard of Oz, back in New Zealand.

Me as the Tin Man

At the time I kidded myself that the part was mine because of my impressive grande jetes and blimin good pirouettes. The truth was that our ballet mistress, Mrs Shirley Dibble, had identified my mother as a speedy sewer and my Tim Man solo was reward for Mum running up 20 poppy costumes.

I did a jagged, stiff-legged dance totally appropriate to the character but which was so incredibly lengthy it may have even had two parts. I think the second part was added after Mum sewed the individual 15 Yellow Brick costumes as well.

As I entered the stage from the wings, stiffly of course, I felt euphorically devoid of a heart. I was the Tin Man. "That clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caligenous junk". I swooped, kicked and swung my hatchet, devastatingly affecting. I remember finally killing the young tiger (hmm did that actually happen in the story?) to abandoned uproarious applause.... which I now realise was the audiences' desperate banging of feet, hands and heads to get the blood flowing again.

Have you ever wondered why so many superbly untalented people line up for days to enter American Idol. Where on earth did they get the idea they can sing and dance? Why, Toto, one day in the past, those people did their own Tin Man Dance and they received that same uproarious, albeit relieved, applause.

What's your talent?