Surviving Your Daughter's Dance Recital

Conventional wisdom is that your daughter spent months getting ready for this, the least you can do is devote an hour (or maybe 90 minutes) of your time, to see the finished product.

Yes there are other things to be doing on a Savannah Saturday in May. But in this case, conventional wisdom is the correct course. And then if the stars are aligned, it can be pretty painless.

First, how do you get your son to sit still during the performance? Answer: not my problem. His Mom and Grandma were taking care of that. And while a portable DVD player and headphones wouldn't be the way I would've handled it, I was free of the burden of making that call.

I had printed out the show order from the dance website so I knew which numbers I had to really pay attention for. It also spared me the price of a program.

By the way, here's a new experiment: find out the proportion for dance recital girls ages 5-10 who's first name starts with the letter A...

Addison, Amelia, Amilie, Arianna, Allie, Abigail, Angelina, Ava, Amanda, Anna, Anna Kate, Avery, Alexandra, Ayden, Adeline (2), Alice, Ansley, Anastasia.

A is one letter in 26, yet girls whose name starts with A probably made up 25-30% of the dancers. Is it preordained? Do the moms think of their little ballerina when choosing a name? That their daughter will be listed first in their dance program? This is worth some follow up by the Freakonomics guys.

I mean it. My daughter's name starts with C, and she was listed 6th alphabetically in her group of 11.

Anyhow, I brought binoculars since a single ticket on the day of show has traditionally been pretty far back. But a family gave a single ticket back while I was waiting on line. So I got a free seat in row B.

So without paying for a ticket, a program, or parking (I parked at Tattnall & Harris - about a block from the Civic Center), the only expense I had was flowers. Got a solid discount on that too since the florist is next door.

And I was back in my car 90 minutes after I had parked, and one minute before it started raining. It was a sublime Saturday interlude and I was home in time for the Preakness.