Other People’s Children
Jocelyn has always been a special child, and that's just the way it's always been. Other children fidget, cry, stamp their feet, get runny noses — but not Jocelyn. Pageant kids are usually better behaved than the non-pageant variety, of course, but even so, Jocelyn is a standout. Of course Teddy and I have loved her with all our hearts her whole life, but it's almost like she just knew how to act regardless of the coaching. I watch the other mothers smile with their mouths and not their eyes when their girls are on stage, but when Jocelyn does her talent routine or her Promenade, I'm relaxed. When I look in some of those poor little girls' eyes, I see that they don't like this: they don't like the mascara, they don't like sequins, they get tired of their dance or majorette routines. Sometimes the mothers hiss under their breath or the child rips off a false eyelash in front of a judge. And that's where I draw the line. Children should not be made to do things unless they want it. It's like Oriental sweatshop children — they don't want to be there. Jocelyn wants to be there. Every bouncy ringlet, every crisply executed split, every careful moment of eye contact with each judge: you know Jocelyn wants to be there, and the judges know it, and the other parents know it, too.
OK, I wish I had written about this topic. It is so awful this sort of stuff - and I have to say, from a non-American perspective, seemingly so relentlessly American - and the way you write about it, it's the same sort of reasoning that pedophiles give. Oh so creepy, but quite passionless and reasonable and almost understandable.
Excellent. Love the beginning and the last sentence. Moral fiction without the high horse.
I agree ... creepy ... and that's why it works. Don't agree that this phenomenon is "relentlessly American," though.
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Very nice work, John. The form is just right. I like this piece.
Thanks, gentlemen! Much appreciated.
And Matt, the double whammy of being compared to a pedophile while being creepy and passionless -- well, just stop! You're going to make my ego swell. :)
What an interesting take on responsibility! Great writing, and great for the theme. *
Hypocrisy and denial at their heights. Well-played, John. Peace
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Ya gotta love those kids who fidget, cry, stamp their feet, get runny noses....
What a strange and compelling little girl you've created in this Jocelyn. I am intensely interested in knowing about child pageants because they seem so perverted and unreal
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Great tale. I kind of wish we'd get to know this child and her parents more.
Great double meaning in the use of the prompt and the story.
Kind of creepy... I can see Jocelyn as one of those porcelain dolls with the scary too big eyes and bowed mouth... always smiling at something unseen.
And the parents... yes, that undercurrent of hypocrisy and denial as Linda commented, and yet I kind of want to believe if Jocelyn wasn't interested anymore, they might, just might, let her stop all the nonsense.