Monthly Archives: June 2010

A Soul is Worth $32 GST Included


When you decide to screw a person over for money, you calculate the risk that the amount of money saved is directly proportional or greater than the amount of grief the person you are screwing can dish back at you. More importantly though, you are calculating that your karmic footprint will not be so weighty as to dictate a future stint as some kind of insect.

At least that’s how I roll.

I learn over and over that this is not the case for most people.

Dee’s dance experience ended on a sour note. Hindsight, with all her clarity, tells me I should have made the decision to quit for her after the festival competition fiasco, but I allowed the owner of the dance studio to sway me (and make me feel as though it was my fault Dee wasn’t enjoying dance and a bad mom to boot) and I, inadvertently, swayed Dee by reminding her of her completely non-reciprocal responsibility to the other girls in her group who were counting on her to show up for the end of the year performance.

The studio owner, however, was being shrewd at Dee’s expense. She has a policy of requiring 2 weeks notice for termination of lessons and then refunds the balance. With nearly six weeks to go, she would have had to refund 4 weeks times 3 classes worth of funds.

No, I didn’t see that one coming. She suckered me good.

The dress rehearsal for the end of the year performance was its usual fiasco. I don’t think anyone involved has even the slightest idea of how to manage that many children at once and as I have mentioned, the teacher in me seethed at the lack of foresight and the blatant waste of adult time.

I had mentioned my concerns to the studio owner, and she ignored them as she does everyone’s concerns and complaints. It is her modus operandi. Nod, smile in a non-committal manner and then pretend the conversation never took place when she is called to account later.

Did I mention that after Dee missed the ballet rehearsal (because of the issues that I brought up weeks before) she stood in the back stage hallway and sobbed for nearly 10 minutes while people from the studio hurried around, casting uneasy little glances as they passed but not saying a word to me or Dee?

Yeah, that’s why I issued the executive order – way too late – and decided that Dee was done for the year. No one at the studio cared about her or her feelings. The ballet instructor is a teenager who has an agenda that centers squarely on herself. The more dance groups she teaches and choreographs for who go off to competitions and do well – the better her resume. That’s bottom line for her.

When the stage manager offered to let the ballet group rehearse again – 4 minutes tops – with Dee, her teacher said, “They don’t need to.”

And fuck you too.

The studio owner called the next night. It was the usual dissembling attempt to get me to take the blame for Dee having missed her curtain. Nothing is ever her fault and, rather than argue, I simply stated facts until she changed her story – three times and still without accepting responsibility or apologizing.

Apologizing, by the way, goes a long way and should usually be the go-to when a customer, which I am, is feeling slighted, which Dee and I were.

The conversation ended abruptly when I heard my cell phone ring and I knew it was Rob calling from the airport. Nothing was resolved, but after discussing things with Rob, I sent an email asking for a refund for the tickets to the final performance on June 4. $32.

Today, I ran into one of the other dance moms at Costco.

“Did you get the tickets?” she asked.

“Excuse me?”

“For the performance last night, ” she said. “They gave me your tickets to give to you when I saw you last night, but I never did. Did you finally get them?”

“Um,” I thought about trying to explain but decided against it. “Don’t worry about it. It worked out.”

It’s not worked out. Not by a long shot.

Unavoidable


So I dipped a toe into the topic of the avoidable, but didn’t delve into the flip-side, did I?

The young woman isn’t identified in the photo credits. Perhaps the photographer, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images didn’t ask. It would take a ballsy person to stroll up to such a scene and play 20 questions though I imagine he’d have gotten chapter verse and the annotated notes if he had.The grave belongs to U.S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Noah Pier. He was killed February 12, 2010 in Marja, Afghanistan and is resting at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, which is just outside the capital.

I’ve been there. It’s beautiful, belies its purpose and history. Arlington was the plantation home of Robert E. Lee’s wife. They abandoned it when he turned down Lincoln’s offer to head the Union Army, resigned his commission and went to serve the Confederacy. The mansion was built by George Washington’s grandson and the father of Lee’s wife, Anna.

The house was commandeered and used as a garrison and it was Union General Mieg’s idea to start burying dead soldiers there, partly as a rebuke to Lee. Mieg’s own son was among the first war dead interred there.

I wonder. Did he sleep on the left side of their bed? Is this the first restful nap she’s had in months? Were they married? Engaged?

Not that any of that matters but I bet she’d have told Chip if he asked.

I found the picture in my blog reader and then just after I found a post about John Cazale, the actor. You’d know him if you saw him. He only made five movies before he died of bone cancer in 1978, but all five were nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards, and he is cited by folks like Pacino, De Niro and Streep as being one of their great influences.

But that’s not why I found him interesting or mention him now.

Meryl Streep and John Cazale were engaged to be married when he died. She nursed him throughout his illness. She even took a minor part in The Deer Hunter, just to be with him and take care of him as he went about making his last movie.

She was with him when he died.

And then six months later, she was married.

Some people would find that shocking. Judge her even.

Yet, she’s been married for 31 years and has four children and by all accounts is very content, happy even.

She helped put together a documentary about Cazale and agreed to be interviewed. She is puffy-eyed and tearful at turns on the screen as she talks about him.

And yet …

I wonder about Noah Pier and this girl. On this most recent Memorial Day she is napping on his still fairly fresh grave, but where will she be mid-summer? Or fall? Or next year?

Losing people we love isn’t anymore avoidable than someday being “lost” ourselves. But it isn’t the end … of anything really.