Sometimes I get to make dinner, drive my kids around, unload the dish washer, do the laundry, hang snow pants to dry, wipe up sloppy, wet, grainy, snowy-boot-prints from in front of the mat despite my incessant chanting and beautifully embroidered sign hanging above the door, “Please keep your F’n sloppy, wet, grainy, snowy-boots on the mat—Thank you, the management.”

 
But on really special occasions, I get to play referee when my kids need some guidance to help them solve a problem.

 
Last night’s problem had something to do with dancing. Ah yes, my specialty.
The kids marched into the family room holding an ipad blasting music the way we would have with our giant boom boxes in the 80’s except instead of Madonna’s “Material Girl” it was Madonna’s current hit.

 
They beckoned me from the other room where they rightfully assumed I must have been being fanned with giant palm fronds and eating freshly pitted grapes.

 
“Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Choke down those grapes and come and watch us dance!”

 
I agreed to watch the first (of many) performances but as expected with any professional dance crew, there were at least two divas in the midst and things were about to get complicated.

 
The dance number, to the untrained eye, appeared to be happening completely spontaneously despite the pleas from my 8 year old, “We’ve been rehearsing this forever.”

 
Really?

 
One kid dropped out of the act as soon as she saw a marker that still had a matching cap. She knew what she had to do. Pull out a pile of paper, draw one line, leave the lid in one room, marker in the next so it could dry out like all of the others.

 
And then there were two.

 
It was a dance battle unlike any I’ve seen and I’ve seen at least two.

 
One kid wanted to choreograph but wanted to use her power to assign “boring” and “standing around” moves to her talent.

 
The other wanted to “feel” the music and move around the ottoman the way the material girl had intended, with reckless abandon.

 
I would be hard press to call what I saw next “dancing” but it definitely dislodged one of the grapes from my esophagus.