Backstage Tailgating Backstage Tailgating
by Darren Johnson
Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of experi-
encing a whole new adventure in Tailgating. It’s
not very often that the tailgating alumni get to
really do what we love with our kids and fami-
lies. I don’t know about you guys but most all of
my tailgating is usually in an adult environment
with a kid or two sprinkled in occasionally. Not
that I don’t love tailgating with my kids but I
have a hard enough time getting tickets for my
wife and myself to the events we go to. I have to
confess that my daughters ( 4) are increasing
the pressure quite substantially as football sea-
son is approaching. They have now said they
will stay at the tailgate while my wife and I go
into the games. That may sound a bit irrespon-
sible but there is usually 20 to 40 of our friends
now that actually come to our tailgates and stay
and watch whatever on the TV’s and never go
inside. Of course my wife will feel the Catholic
guilt build and give up her ticket so one of the
four goes in with me.
Well back to the point of this story, my two
youngest daughters Olivia 13, & Bayley 10 were
competing in a regional dance competition at
the Lakeland Civic Center in Lakeland, Florida.
My daughters dance studio “Shooting Stars
School of Performing Arts” is comprised of a
competition dance company of about 150 kids
ranging in ages (boys & girls) from 8-18. This
dance company competes all over the southeast U.S. in the spring and summer each year
and is made up of a couple 100 parents put into
two categories “Dance Moms” and “Prop Dads”.
As you can imagine the moms are the stressed
out, running crazy, barking orders, dressing
room drama generators and the “prop dads are
a bunch of laid back dudes who schlep the
props on and off the stage for our kids dance
numbers. This is about 15-20 dads (and 1 granddad) who volunteer their time to build props,
load trucks and all the other manly tasks you
could imagine that go along with a Broadway
production. We all hangout backstage at the
venue loading dock and when our kids are not
performing we congregate in the parking lot.
Now you can start to see what is evolving here
now right?
