Step Up

So my parents help me a lot. As in, I couldn't do it without them. They pick up my boys when I can't, take over the evening runaround when I'm stuck at the hospital, fix things, and do laundry that otherwise would not get done. I'd just buy new underwear.

At the end of this semester, I thought I'd like to show some gratitude by getting them something, but they're not really gift people, more like theater or donate to peacenaturelove people. So I got tickets to two events, one just for them and one for all of us, me, the kids, and my parents. This all-of-us event was a step show, like people doing synchronized stompy/clappy things. Cool, I thought. This will be fun for all! Because rhythm unites all generations, and it's a new experience.

Well, I was right. It was a new experience. But not in the way I thought it would be, like all ages and colors uniting in the power of human innovation with their musical bodies. No, it was more like the new experience of complete and total discomfort as you realize that this show is much racier than you thought, and you are two seats away from your dad.

The actual performances were cool, but sometimes got raunchy. I like raunchy! In certain times and places! But the horribly uncomfortable moment when a stompy clapper pauses to mime....uh....well,...CUNNILINGUS upon a bowl of whipped cream is a moment I will never forget because the flaming hot vasodilation of embarrassment and horror is seared into not just my memory but probably my DNA too. Ohmygod. I mean, it was funny! And graphic, holy shit. But my DAD WAS TWO SEATS AWAY. Did I make that clear? I had the experience, the horrifying, soul-melting experience, of witnessing clear evidence that my dad had knowledge of sex acts, because he didn't look puzzled, as he should have had he no knowledge of sex acts as I prefer to believe. My mom was there too, kind of blithely clapping along, so I was spared further despair on that end, thank Venus.

This whole event was so not okay. What was supposed to be love and gratitude turned into the clashing of two things that should never coexist, parents and sex. I'm surprised we did not create antimatter, because it was like the Large Hadron Collider sped embarrassment, visions of parental purity, and raunchy graphic tongue moves into a superconducting stream of plasma capable of annihilating rational thought as we know it. I guess a stream of plasma wouldn't just create antimatter, though, so my physics broke down a little bit there. But still! It was really bad, is what I'm saying.