Supporting your brotha'

My daughter had a choir concert tonight.

She's a freshman in High school.

She was in two songs.






I bought her the outfits she was supposed to wear and she looked really cute when I dropped her off but other that a couple flashes of her cheek and eye, her pony tail spinning as she spun in a circle which I caught the briefest flash of- I didn't see her at all.

My other daughter went to this school also, which is how it has come to pass that I have had to endure 3 years now of this same choir teacher.

The shows are pretty good, flashy fun costumes, most of the kids are pretty talented and it is entertaining for the first hour but not for 3 1/2 hours.

After 3 1/2 hours my ass is sore, my feet are sore and I'm aggravated.

I didn't even get to see her.


We went to see Alicia Keys like a week ago I guess. It was one of the best concerts I have been to in quite a while. It really was! The music was awesome, the showmanship excellent and I was really impressed.

I should mention that I was also completely thrilled that we were able to bring the girls with us that night because they completely loved it and it was certainly as much of a pleasure for me to watch them having fun, clapping and getting into the music at the show as it was for me to watch the show itself.

I had to thank Nicholas several times for providing us with the opportunity to share it all together.



We were lucky enough to be in a suite for the concert where we hovered above most of the crowd and just above and off to the side of the stage.

There I was in that huge stadium of clapping people at that awesome concert and there were a couple of times that I just didn't feel like clapping - and I didn't.

What difference do my little clapping hands make in a big huge crowd like that anyway I thought to myself.

"Umm... like, NONE."

As I stood there enjoying the show but not clapping, it did occur to me to wonder what would happen if everyone were like me?

If everyone at that show just got lazy on clapping like me and figured there was no need for them to clap in that crowd of clapping people -

Like me, they figured the clappers would just tow the load for them and so they just didn't clap; and when Alicia was done singing one of her beautiful songs, instead of whoops and hollers there was just silence...

or ok, even a couple random clappers maybe, but they would sound pitiful because everyone else didn't clap at all...

I thought that if that happened much of the crowd would surely be shocked at their own silence and ashamed by the inaction of the rest of the crowd and maybe many would feel mortified for the star who we would have left standing out there in an unexpected and shocking hush.

Some people would start clapping then just to break the silence, as if doing so could change what had already come to pass and then probably more and more and more would chime in eventually but it would come off to Alicia like we were a really half assed crowd that didn't really mean it in the end and mostly she would talk for years in interviews and her next novel about that night and how we let her down as people because she had opened herself and her heart up to us through her music and we failed to share in that giving by keeping her head above the water.

Have you ever been let down that way?

I have, and so anyway I decided she would have every right to feel terrible and write as many books as she was inspired to on this topic.


When I thought all of that through to myself there at the concert I started clapping again and I clapped for each song she sang- even though I felt lazy and a little tipsy with my Crown and cokes and my claps didn't ever matter much more than to be a part of keeping the clap going but I was really ok with that.