With an anxious stomach, I stand behind the long black curtains and watch off stage as the teenage girls tap dance before the large audience in Boone, Iowa. It’s the Betty Mae Harris dance recital. I want to throw up. But still, I watch the teenagers who are clever and quick and know all their steps. Shuffle Ball Change, Heel Tap, Toe Tap. Wow, I’m impressed. 

“You’re up next,” the woman at the curtain says.

Yikes!

I know that I don’t know my steps. And I’ve already developed a certain fatalistic acceptance that I’m going to be embarrassed. But I’m mildly relieved that I can follow my three talented sisters and hopefully no one will notice that I’m a step or two behind or that I am one of the few boys among a thousand girls performing at a time when that meant something — and it wasn’t positive. 

“Next up, ladies and gentlemen, The Four Weegs dancing Yellow Rose of Texas.”

And there we are. I am a tap-dancing, plaid-shirt wearing fool. The year is 1964.

As for you in the audience, I knew even as a kid that recitals were absolutely no fun to watch. Look, the audience is made up of parents like my parents, who were required when they received their parent badge to support their very own uncoordinated and spaced-out kid (me in this case). And then, because of societal pressure, they have to support some other parent’s uncoordinated and spaced-out kid because those parents supported my mom and dad’s uncoordinated and spaced-out kid. And suddenly the entire auditorium is supporting someone else’s uncoordinated and spaced-out kid until a Saturday afternoon nap is only a dream for that half-asleep mom and dad. And that’s how it works. The dance recital blues in action.

Now don’t judge me harshly for this observation about the audience. I know you love your highly talented child. Who wouldn’t? And, like most of the audience, I am amazed that her finger can get that deep in her nose for the entire dance number. Bravo to you and to your wonderful parenting. I get it. And, yes, she will dance professionally — and care for you in your old age — if of course she can ever dislodge her finger.  

Which gets us to today — my granddaughter’s dance recital. It’s been 61 years since I graced the big stage in a plaid shirt and tap shoes and wanting to vomit. You could safely conclude that my expectations are a smidgeon low.

My goodness, look at this. The audience is issued glow sticks, which we waive around crazily to the beat of stadium music like we are at a rock concert. A clever pregame warmup. Now that’s a little different. 

First up are amazing teenage dancers, who fly across the stage to let the parents see where it could all end if their kid stuck to it. Smart. 

Then the young kids are corralled and prodded into positions on stage. There they stand frozen. Or they turn their backs to the audience and stare at the projections on the back curtains. Or they actually, miraculously, do the dance.

But, unlike years ago, I’m totally charmed by this chaos. I clap enthusiastically after each number. I stomp my feet. I yell “Bravo!” I’m so enjoying myself that parents are rightfully staring at me. “Who is this weirdo?”

Yup, I get it. 

And so it goes all afternoon. Group after group enter and leave the stage like ducklings crossing the street — some here, some there, and some never leaving the curb. If anyone remembers some of the steps, I applaud like they’d just won at the Drake Relays.

What has come over me?

At last my six-year-old granddaughter comes out with her group. I actually know some of her hiphop jazz steps because she taught me the day before: tap your left foot eight times, swing both arms right to left, jazz hands, jazz hands. Her mom tells me that she woke an hour early to practice her moves. Of course she did. I yell and stomp with joy.

WAY TO GO, JULIETTE!

Here I am, a card-carrying curmudgeon, charmed into loving a dance recital. Who knew. 

But later my rose-tinted grandfather eyes aren’t totally blind to a small boy dancer. In several dances he is the only boy in a sea of girls. He must be about four years old. He always enters stage left and pretty much does his own thing as the girls dance their shoes off. No smile. No acknowledgment that he’s on stage. He spends his performance turning slowly in circles and staring at something only he can see. When the dance number ends, he walks off stage like he just clocked out after a double shift at the John Deere factory — the heavy burden of a hard day of work causing him to plod slowly home, shoulders slumped. 

In the boy’s last performance, the music stops, the girls exit in a flurry, and he looks at the audience for the first time that afternoon . . . and he decides to take a run for the edge of the five-foot high stage and . . . freedom?

Whaaaat?

An instructor catches him in plenty of time. But I am mesmerized and want to raise my fist to the heavens and shout support for all the little boys just trying to hang on in a complicated world. So I wave my glow stick in the air and stomp my feet and hope he hears me across time and space.

And there you have it: Grandpa Joe goes to a dance recital.

Joe