Sometimes in life you get happy surprises. Today one came in the form of an eleven year old girl. Let me tell you all about it.
On Fridays Mark and I go in to work late so that we can plan evening activities. I had a talent show planned for tonight, and I asked the campers to come in and audition this afternoon. I didn’t really expect them to go through an audition, but I wanted to get their names and what they were going to do and how long they thought they might need. We got two and three year olds coming in wanting to sing the ABCs or Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. We got older kids signing up to do gymnastics, dance and sign language.
And then a dad and his eleven year old daughter came in prepared to do a full audition. He unpacked his guitar and I thought, “Okay, let’s hear what they’ve got.” This girl began belting out a country song and he was her backup. They were so good that I asked them to prepare for a fifteen minute program of their own.
The talent show started at 6:00 this evening in the clubhouse, and Mark and I weren’t sure how many people to plan for. We put up three rows of chairs, which were quickly filled. We ended up having six rows of chairs. I told Mark he was going to have to MC and ham it up really well because we didn’t have enough acts to fill the two hours we’d allowed. We started with an autistic girl who read her favorite jokes from a book. Then we had the littlest children go. One tiny little boy got up and told how Easter isn’t really about the Easter Bunny and he went into the whole story of Passion Week through the Resurrection. I swear he was only about two or three years old. One girl got a bad case of cold feet and we had to come back to her several times before she’d get up and do her song.
I saved the father/daughter act for last. They did four songs and everyone loved it. As they were about to sit down, I asked her to come to the Activity Center later and give me her autograph, and someone else in the audience called out and asked for her name because they said they wanted to keep an eye out for her in the next few years.
The act was so good that Mark went up and told Melanie about it and asked if we could get them to come and sing at another event. Melanie went down and talked with them at their camp and offered them a free weekend stay here in exchange for them performing. We hadn’t planned to hand out prizes for the talent show, but Melanie suggested we give them the prize we had gotten for the St Patrick’s Day parade that never happened. I wish that pair had something up on YouTube that I could direct everyone to. I’ve seen some amazing young talent on YouTube, and this girl could rival any of it.