A non-dancing Engineer

There’s a talent show is DS’s school. The teacher asked the kids if anybody wanted to participate.

But of course, mostly girls raised their hands.

“What about the boys?” the teacher asked.

My son meekly lifted his hand up. And then there were some more little boy hands hesitantly going up.

And before he knew it, he was signed up for a dance performance.

I got an email saying that my son along with a few kids had signed up to dance for the Talent Show. While surprised, I was excited to see what my son had planned to practice.

After his usual excited entry home, and his scrumptious hug, I asked him – “So babe, it’s exciting that you’re going to participate in the talent show.”

His face turned somber.

“Mamma, I only lifted my hand, so it would encourage the other boys to lift their hands too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mamma, only girls had raised their hands and the teacher asked what about the boys. So to encourage everyone, I raised my hand. And as I raised my hand, the other boys raised their hands too. I forgot to put my hand down when their hands went up, so I had to sign up.

“I asked if I could do some engineering or show my inventions, and the teacher said I could do dance or sing, and so I am signed up to dance.”

“But that’s still good?” I asked, not knowing what he really wanted to do.

“No, Mamma. Not good at all. The other boys want me to dance and sing, and I hate doing both.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Well, I thought I could do engineering, but I can’t show that in the talent show, so I don’t want to do anything.”

His friends’ parents had called him for a dance practice by then, and I told him to try it out and if he didn’t still like it, I’d let his teacher know.

Sure enough, he had a lot of fun playing, but hated the part where he had to practice dancing.

And as promised, I let the parents and the teacher know as well that he did not want to participate in the Talent Show.

And immediately he started building his gadgets with lego, and he was his usual happy self.

“I am an engineer”, he said smiling as he built, “not a dancer.”

“You know you can be both” I immediately replied on reflex.

“Yeah, I do. I don’t want to dance though. I just want to build.”

Well, if that’s what he wanted to do… ‘poor guy the amount of stress dancing for the show created on him’ I thought looking at him.

“Mamma” he came to me rather quickly. “I am missing a few pieces of lego. Can you buy me a new set?”

So much for all the stress.