When parents embarrass their children

This story was originally titled "Lord of the Dance" in the January 2009 issue. Subscribe to Canadian Living today and never miss an issue!

There are things parents do intentionally, I think, to embarrass their children. Maybe they’re hoping to build character. Maybe they’re just after some twisted private amusement. Not having children, I don’t know, but I suspect they want to have a secret weapon against future threats of the nursing home.

For the most part, my parents weren’t too bad, and didn’t seek out opportunities to embarrass me. But they did secure one trump card, one skeleton in my closet to use against me: They made me take ballet for a year.

I was about four years old, and I suppose the idea was that the stretching and exercise would be good for my perpetually uncooperative hips. That being said, I’d give anything to have seen what it took to convince my father to enrol me in dance classes. This is a man who looks sideways at any meal that didn’t once have a heartbeat; a straitlaced, by-the-book conservative dad. And yet he let his only begotten son take ballet. It must have been a feat of negotiation on my mother’s part.

Now, my memories of the classes are vague, but recollections of the recital do endure. Also enduring are the photos, the costume and the shame.

The theme of the dance was something to do with apples. Waltz of the Granny Smiths, Rumba of the Russets, Mince of the McIntoshes – I can’t remember. What I do know is that I was an “apple picker,” armed with a red plastic wheelbarrow and bedecked in a sumptuously mortifying outfit of silky red pants, a lime green turtleneck and a red silk vest, fringed (of course) with shiny green sequins.

Naturally, and to my everlasting regret, my mother insisted upon taking pictures of me in this getup on our front lawn.

Honestly, the girls did most of the dancing; dressed as apples, they swished and twirled in unison and actually performed a dance. I, on the other hand, cannot be said to have danced, per se. Dressed as an effeminate Chinese tortoise, I grabbed my wheelbarrow and – with scant regard for anything resembling choreography – charged recklessly around the stage, weaving between prancing apples and (presumably) making loud car engine noises. The way I choose to remember it, I was a menace; a terror in red satin, interrupting dance steps, plowing over slippered feet, carrying the smaller girls away in my barrow and dumping them at the side of the stage. But what actually happened is probably less exciting.

Looking back, I’m grateful that my father was too cheap to buy a camcorder, or I’d be watching showings of “the recital” at every family gathering. Still, when I was a teenager, “the recital” cropped up in conversation with my mom, usually with devastating effect on my fragile, painfully adolescent sense of self-esteem. “Oh [insert name of girl I had a crush on] – she’s in your science class? She was in that apple recital with you. Remember?”

I do remember. And even now, as an adult, this memory humbles me. Picturing myself in that ridiculous outfit, I’m reminded that if I start to get carried away with myself, there’s someone who knows every little embarrassing secret I have.

Lesson learned, Mom.

James Doyle has abandoned the stage to be a copy editor with Canadian Living Magazine.

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