My plan was to sneak off to the lobby with the smokers and the bored dads and mark exams. It didn’t quite work that way.

Today was the annual concert for our girls’ piano “club” and a sister club. Dozens of kids of different ages took turns showing off their musical skills (for better and for worse) and the club teachers showed off their musical skills (for better and for worse).

We arrived early and secured seats and I then spent the practice period marking and giving dirty looks back to anyone who gave me dirty looks as I was technically occupying eight seats, including one that never got used (more on that later).

The problem was our girls were scattered around different places in the program which made it impossible for me, as official videographer, to run away. Our youngest closed out the first set with “Dolly’s Dreaming and Awakening” by Theodore Oesten. She Who Must Be Obeyed was worried about this performance as our youngest has inherited my tendency to suck at stuff in practice and then deliver a good performance. (Note: this does not apply to sports other than karate.) Our youngest did a great job with only a couple small mistakes.

She was followed by the piano instructors who showed off their skills on the piano and the Electone (or shockingly high tech electric organ).

I was then informed that I was to record our girls’ piano teacher’s performance and then informed that I’d recorded the wrong performance (despite instructions to do so) and was supposed to record the later piano performance. The problem was this performance came well after our girls duet on “Whole New World” from Aladdin. My plan to run away and mark was thus thwarted.

My father-in-law ended up sitting next to me and he 1) stole my extra leg space (Japanese concert hall seating was designed by the sadist who designs airplane economy class seats) and 2) fell asleep which meant I had to occasionally wake him up.

At the same time, the lady on the other side of the eighth seat seemed angry that it was occupied by exams and not a person.

Our oldest then did a terrific performance of Chopin’s “Puppy Waltz” (aka The Minute Waltz) and that was followed by her playing the piano whilst all the other piano students sang.

As always, our girls rocked, and some of the others were pretty good, too. However, I’m not sure the teachers needed three different performances to show off their piano and electric organ skills. That seemed self-indulgent (he said as he wrote a blog about his life) especially when the performances weren’t always that good.

Next year, I hope they cut back their performances. I also hope they move the whole thing back a week so I can enjoy it without exams.