Talent, or lack thereof

I don't know why we Mormons do it. Why are we so compelled to embarrass ourselves in front of other people in the name of "talent"? Yes, it was our ward talent night tonight. And it was a hoot. You had the usual suspects: little kids telling not-so funny jokes ("what kind of key never opens any locks? A Donkey! WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!),the little kids playing instruments badly, like the two brothers who played a duet with one brother a measure behind the entire song (Yes, the whole song. They didn't even end together), and the primary girls singing off key, blushing and giggling when they forgot the words, and saying stuff like "Um, hi (giggle), hi, we're up here, hi", until some merciful parent gave them the words to the primary song they are singing. But I feel like our ward went above and beyond the usual spectrum of bad tonight. First, there was our MC. He was dressed (I'm not making this up) in camoflauge fatigue pants and a pink and blue tie-dyed shirt. It hurt to look at him. And then two adults, yes TWO adults read their original poetry. People, if you are over the age of 10, nobody wants to hear an original poem recited at a talent night. And we sure as hell don't want to hear 4 of them. And I don't care how lovely you sing, if you didn't practice with your duet partner, you will invariably mess up and look silly. There were some highlights, of course. The missionaries would periodically run across the stage, interupting the psychedelic MC with their juggling antics, which sometimes invovled their own shoes. Some 12 year olds sang "Book of Mormon stories" ala early 90's grunge band, complete with drums and keyboards. And one kid who looked to be about 8 told us everything he knew about spiders. Did you know that black widows only attack you if you pull on their webs and act like you are going to squish them? Because if you don't do that, they don't bite you. But tarantulas can bite, and even though they're not poisonous to people, a bite on the leg can still cause you a lot of pain. Tarantulas are strong. Jacob slept through most of this, leaving me with a huge drool mark across my breast on my white shirt, which looked lovely from the stage, I'm sure. Yes, I participated in this talent debacle tonight, although I'd like to think our number (I shoowapped with some other ladies) was the hit of the night. If nothing else, we knocked 'em dead with our encore, which was our 30 second tribute to RiverDance. Yes, we had a young mother flying through the stage like a gazelle, doing her best imitation of Lord of the Dance. I'm telling you, it doesn't get any better than that.