I had some time last weekend to do a little creating with some photos from Bryn's dance recital last year. The combination of products I used is a mix of old + new... my favorite way to create. I also used quite a few of the Everyday Girl SRM Stickers on here... love those...
To be perfectly honest, it took me 8 months to document this event because the evening was so disturbing for me that I couldn't decide how detailed I wanted to get with the journaling. In the end though, I decided to keep things to the point without going into too much detail and just slip it into Bryn's book for her to read when she's older since she knows nothing of what actually transpired that night.
My mother's intuition knows for sure there were 2 sleazy pedophiles sitting in the front row, right in front of me taking hundreds of photos, some shots completely inappropriate (zooming in on chest shots, rear ends, etc). NO ONE, other than them, was taking that many photos of ALL the classes. You're there to watch your child & take photos of your child. Each of the classes performed 2 dances at 2 separate times, plus there were 2 performances with everyone on stage. Half-way through the night their incessant photo-taking distracted me & I started paying more attention to what was on their digital camera screen, than I was paying to the girls on stage. I confronted one of the men during a break in the performance, by tapping him on the shoulder. He wouldn't look me in the eye during our conversation.
I said, "Taking a lot pictures there, aren't you?"
He grunted.
I said, "Why are you taking all those pictures?"
He said, "The teacher told me to." Uh huh... the teacher.
I said, "So you know someone on stage?"
He replied with a girl's name.
With that, I looked through my program & found the girl's name as the next group was coming out on stage. Bryn's class still had not performed by this point. Right before Bryn's class did come out on stage I tapped the sleaze bag's shoulder again & said, "Hey. Don't take any photos of this class. Tell your friend."
They both sat there & watched the performance. At one point during the song, one guy held up his camera, so I tapped him again & said, "NO." He put it down. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to cause a scene, but I thought I'll be damned if I'm going to let these freaks have photos of my daughter on their camera. Then I got the mom next to me stirred up because she noticed my conversations with the sleaze bags & it got her upset too. Bob & I did take photos of these guys that night & I wrote a letter to a local detective that's a client of Bob's. I also spoke with her teacher & told her about everything that happened and then pulled Bryn from the program... which is why we're playing volleyball now. The detective agreed that what happened was disturbing but unless he could ID these guys, there was probably nothing that would come of it. I figured that, but had to tell someone of authority what happened that night.
I'm getting all fired up all over again. Anyway, I didn't want you to click on that image, read the journaling & think, HUH? I guess the moral to this story is follow your instincts, especially when it comes to protecting your child. Those feelings are real.
On a lighter note... LOL... I just wanted to say from all of us to you...
...thank you SO MUCH for all of your kind words, prayers, hugs & friendship. You are all so thoughtful & I feel blessed to be surrounded by such goodness. Bob is doing well and his sister & her husband are spending a couple days with us before the funeral this weekend. We're enjoying lots of family time this week and that's a good thing. :-)
XOXO...
