The Humdrum Life of a Hero

Chapter 21

Jay's right hand creeps along my bare thigh, nearing the hem of my skirt at a dangerous pace and with no intent of stopping anytime soon. I slowly, as not wanting to attract the attention of the parents and grandparents surrouding me, place my hand on top of his, worming my fingers under his hand and wrapping my hand around his. I pry his hand off of my leg, and I place both of ours onto his lap.

He glances over at me with a grin smeared on his face. I glare back at him and pointedly pull my skirt down a little more. Jay pouts as soon as I do, but then the curtain on the stage in front of us opens.

The bright stage lights illuminate all of the kids up on the stage, which is great because since Jay and I decided to take a detour, we walked in fairly late and had to set up camp in the very back of the cafeteria/auditorium. I locate Nick and Connor on the top row of the risers, and I see Annalise down on the first row with the other first graders. All three of our kids look warm and angry.

I probably should've taken the hot, blinding lights into consideration when I made the boys put on sweaters and black dress pants. They look miserable up on that stage. On the other hand, Annalise wore a sleeveless dress, and therefore doesn't look as miserable as my two, but still has that general, vaguely pissed offed-ness that she always seems to possess.

Jay places his other hand on top of mine, almost like when a sports team puts their hands in and yells, "Break!" His hands are clammy, a clear sign that he's either warm, like our kids up on stage, or nervous, which, quite frankly, I wouldn't understand because we just got a little hot and heavy in an elementary classroom. After the classroom incident, he should be as calm and cool as a cucumber.

The kids begin to sing a medley of classic Christmas songs like 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town' and 'Jingle Bell Rock', but as they drag on, their songs turn from classics to ones I've never even heard of before. Seriously, is there an actual song called 'Alligator Christmas' that people know and sing every single December that I just have never seemed to have heard before?

"Did she just say 'Alligator Christmas'?" Jay turns to me and asks. I watch all of the small arms form the mouth of an alligator and "chomp" along to the song and respond to Jay, "That is exactly what she just said."

The song, thankfully, comes to an end, bringing relief to the audiences ears. Another out of left field song begins to play as Jay takes a hand off our stack and squeezes my knee with it. I don't mind his gesture so much as long as he doesn't go any farther north.

I unglue my eyes off of the stage and look around at the people with whom we're muddling through this with. I recognize a few soccer parents and few high school age kids, but I couldn't put names to the faces of the high school kids even though they're the ones I see in the halls all the time. There's also an influx of the elderly here. Grandparents, I suppose, here watching their little ones sing. Those lucky bastards don't have the hearing to actually hear the "singing" coming from their little munchkins.

The elderly get me thinking about my own grandparents, all four of them died before I was even born. My mother's parents died in a car accident while she was in college, just before she met my dad. There used to be pictures of them around the house, but after a while, they were taken down for unknown reasons.

My dad's parents, on the other hand, died of old age. They were in their late forties when they had my dad. He was about 25 or 26 when they passed within weeks of each other. Supposedly they were both total hard asses and worked themselves into their own grave by the age of 74. Clearly, that's where my dad gets his work ethic.

My grandparents were the only extended family ever talked about in our house. My mother had a sister who she despised and hadn't talked to in years, and my dad didn't have any other siblings. My dad always claimed he was an oops baby, just like all four of us were. He was kidding about us being oops babies, but we all know that Nick and Connor definitely hold that title.