The Song Performance

I remember in the movie Splash, where Allen (Tom Hanks), ... I want to have a kid and watch him play a tooth in a school play. Turns out that was something I looked forward to as well.  And today one of those moments came to life. I hate to sound melodramatic, but this is what it's all about for me. Yeah, yeah, I have a pretty good job and all but I don't wake up in the morning to go to work. If anything, even before the pandemic, it was all about getting to raise Johnnie for the next several years or so. To get to watch him do stuff like today. His first grade class had a song performance, part of a half hour show. I hoped to God he would recover from Covid so he could do this. And now it's here. I am fairly sure I'm more excited about it than he is LOL. He seemed so nonchalant about it when he performed it for me. He had it nailed down pat. As far as the logistics of the event, I walked to the school, Lisa came late. I saved a seat for her but she didn't see it I guess. She sat in the back with Brooklyn's parents. I wanted to sit near the front because I wanted to have a good view in order to record the performance with my iPad. And wouldn't you know I didn't end up doing that? First of all the performances: the first one was the Third Graders, who sang a Korean folk song. Which was pretty impressive. Followed up by an American folksong. Nice parallel there. Then the 4th Graders sang, with guitars and xylophones and percussion instruments. Pretty good. And THEN the First Graders sang. Johnnie's class. Johnnie was Speaker 6 in terms of introducing their performance. They sang 2 songs: Alexander's Ragtime BAND and The Lullaby of Broadway. That Johnnie now knows a couple of Broadway and vaudeville songs in full is pretty damn impressive. What was NOT impressive was that I totally missed recording Johnnie's talk. I wasn't paying attention and thought i turned it on, but didn't. And then on the first song, my position was not good at all as Johnnie's teacher Ms Hwang sat right in front of Johnnie and I couldn't even record him. I couldn't see him. Finally I got the third song recorded. Sigh. At least I got something. And they did so good! JOHNNIE DID SO WELL! As for me I was so happy to have seen the performance. I was re-watching WHILE I was walking home in fact. Now to edit it and send it out. 

In the meantime I was fully aware it was Thursday and after the performance, I had to see if I needed to do some work on anything. Then again by the time I walked back it was already lunchtime. I decided to go to Santa Monica Veggie Grill and give another shot at getting a Beyond Burger. Unlike Tuesday, today's attempt was far more successful. Maybe I was in a high vibration is why. And it was pretty good. Not lost on me was that it was a very nice day out today. I was back by 12:30 it was so easy. Earlier in the week, Johnnie headed home by 12:30 empty handed because I couldn't find a parking spot. Today there were a whole bunch of them in fact.  What a difference a couple of days made. Anyway I spent the rest of the afternoon just chilling. No need to work on steps since I had already done all that walking. And it WAS Friday after all. I picked up Johnnie by 5 PM. He had already changed. I gave him the option of picking whatever he wanted to have for dinner as a reward. All he wanted was some tofu and miso soup. W-ha-t? Hey a promise is a promise. And so I went to Mitsuwa, got the ingredients and made him his tofu dinner. Lisa called fairly early to coordinate picking him up. It was 7 PM by this time and I just drove Johnnie and Claire to Lisa's house. Look at the pic I took. I thought Johnnie had a big day and knocked it out of the park with his class performance. Here he is acting like nothing happened. All he was interested in was his Pokemon cards. Kids. Anyway, Lisa wanted to chill and play a board game with us. The Mousetrap game that was already on the dining room table. And so we played a few rounds and then I headed on home. Lisa simply wanted to have a family night it would seem. Hey I'm very agreeable tonight. How can I not be after Johnnie's day. He might not have thought it was a big deal. I did. And I was very much the proud dad today.