Do it like you’re screaming out the truck window

Reposted from May 2012

Even vampire kids have sports and one of ours is roller skating. Not Roller Derby, but Artistic Roller Skating on FOUR wheels. An awesome sport if there ever was one. I strongly feel that both Speed and Artistic Roller skating should be in the Olympics.

This past weekend was the BIG Memorial Day Skate Meet for the Artistic Skate Club.

Anyway, my 12 year old daughter had some stiff competition. It was an eye opener for her. But for the “Figures” events she received several medals including 2 first place awards.. Very nice. Then came Dance. When she saw who she was up against she was in a panic. These girls are good. Scary good. National Champion good. But not really. She knew what she had to do.

Needless to say she blew it. She went out there like a wet noodle and totally bombed. She was angry and upset and sulked for a while. Then Steve talked her into some food. A few of the old timers gave her pep talks. I told her “35,000 girls are in the B event (about 30). You’re in the A event so there are 5 of you because nobody else can do what you do. You are still one of the best.” Right, like that was going to help. She knew she bombed.

A little background…everyone at the skate rink thinks my child is a quiet reserved and somewhat serious girl. They don’t know about her other life (she is like her mom in that way). At school, at home, with friends…she is LOUD, funny and nonstop – the girl we all know.

The next event was Creative Dance. Her practice has been so-so. The music was some version of Bandstand (Dick Clark) and Brian Stezer’s Sleep Walk then it transitioned into Brian Setzer’s This Cat’s On A Hot Tin Roof. She was in a black & white poka dotted dress, white gloves, cute as a button.

She was feeling pretty awful at that point knowing she’d blow it. The competition was fierce. Also, this was the first time she’d done this at a competition. From what I was at practice she was not ready at all. It was sort of sad.

Take it all back a week.

Last Friday here was a Middle School field trip to Great America in Santa Clara (Physics Day). I volunteered to go. Oh boy. My group was the cute smart well behaved 8th grade boys (the ones we would have had crushes on too at that age). It was a lot of fun, but the drive was long (almost 4 hours home).. I took C and two of her best girl friends in our truck. Of course on the way home we were stuck in Friday rush hour traffic through the South Bay Area. The girls were making faces and yelling (monster noises not words) out the window. I told them to stop but I was laughing too. Then they started to sing along to the radio in odd accents and talk about all sorts of funny things. It was a riot.

Anyway…

Before my child went on for Creative Dance I said

“Do it like you’re screaming out the truck window.”

Nobody else knew what I meant by that, but my daughter did. She went out on the floor and took the house down. She was AMAZING. It was the best performance she ever had. Now she has to learn more fancy footwork to make it rock at the Regional Championships.

But the real moral of this story is to always “Do it like you’re  screaming out the truck window”.  Always.

For more information on Roller Sports see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Roller_Sports