New Braunfels Lacks Talent

Once a year, American students are often herded into whatever passes as their gathering place, wither it be an auditorium, gym, or cafeteria. As soon as all of the students are students are inside the gathering place, they are soon culled, so that none of the deadly secrets of the interworkings of the school district would leak out into the world. Then again, I might be wrong about that. Anyways, usually there would be an annual “talent” show, and I use the world “talent” extremely loosely. To give you an idea of how loose I mean, imagine of an old pair of underpants you had in high-school, that you still have several years after losing a decent amount of weight. When you try and wear those old under-things, they have been stretched out, and the elastic yields about the same tensile strength as the rubber bands you get on the back of cheap Halloween masks. So, technically they work, but it’s also like wearing a grocery bag with leg holes cut out the bottom.

Getting away from underpants, despite how intensely intriguing they are, they are not the subject of my essay. Once a year students would have to suffer though talent shows, where in all actuality no talent was to be found in a twenty mile radius, especially in the New Braunfels Independent School District. The worst of these were in middle school, when kids would form bands, simply for the prestige of performing at the talent show, in front of the entire student body, so that they could be singled out and preyed upon by the talentless people watching them perform. We piled upon the rickety bleachers that were held together with gaffer tape, and the tears of many a janitor, so we could watch people have muscle spasms while holding a guitar, then meekly putter off stage.

The main performance I remember from the two middle school shows I was forced to attend (and purchase a ticket for), was a “rocking” cover of Lynard Skynard’s “Sweet Home Alabama.” It was fine enough just to hear some students performing the song, as they were actually decent musicians and could hold a tune well enough. Though the whole experience became rather uncomfortable and stupid when the faculty forced the entire student body to stand up, clap, and sing along with the song in a giant sign of patriotism. I was annoyed at this, seeing I am likely one of the least patriotic citizens of the south, sure I have a sense of American pride when watching Saving Private Ryan, but that’s pretty fleeting. And second, didn’t anyone besides me know that we weren’t residents of Alabama? I know there is this whole “the south is going to do it again” mentality, but I’m fairly sure that Texas has its own brand of fanatics and their own set of nutty customs and songs. So, there I was, the only one not clapping or singing along, it was as though I had been teleported into a Nickleback concert, and was unable to find an exit from the sea of poor taste.



As a young child, I too preformed in a “talent” show. I was about seven or eight, and I preformed a stunt dubbed “the Human Tornado,” where in I (the human) believed I spun about so fast after uncoiling my limbs which I had wrapped around myself, I would look like a miniature tornado. I suppose I didn’t find this feat nearly interesting enough to enthrall my audience, so I stuffed a pair of shorts with various stuffed animals that wound up flying about the stage as I twirled. Man, I was a weird kid. Why couldn’t I just had played Chop Sticks on the piano like all of the other kids? And wasn’t my feat more about the talent of the elastic of my shorts, rather than my ability to spin around? Perhaps a loose pair of old underwear could have made me the star of the show (callback).