Curse You, Bruno

I stopped by a local Rubio's for lunch on Friday. Little did I know they were serving humble pie for lunch.

At a center table sat three little girls and a woman. One of the girls, looked around 5, was being really cute and funny, and dancing around in an adorable fashion. She would waltz over to the napkins, grab a few, turn back, take a crazy bow, and then waltz back to her seat. She did a little Vanna White thing with the salsa display. She did jazz hands at the drink counter. It was super cute.

I was thoroughly entertained, and she knew it. She totally hammed things up for my benefit, and I was duly charmed, as were a handful of other patrons. But then, she morphed into a Solid Gold dancer, and began dancing like she was on a catwalk instead of circus platform. It was bizarre. Clearly, I thought to myself, this girl watches too much TV. She dances a little too "old" for her age.

That was nothing, however, compared to her younger sister. The littlest girl of the bunch, upon seeing her older sister shake her groove thing, jumped into the fray. She hopped out of her seat and started gyrating around, moving her hands up and down the sides of her body. She even lifted her shirt and rubbed her own chest, swiveling her hips to and fro the entire time, with a sly little look on her face.

It was kind of horrifying. One wonders, when seeing something like this, what these young girls have been exposed to, what their too young eyes have seen. What would you think, upon seeing this?

Well, being as how I was the woman at the table, and the three little girls were with me (my two youngest, plus a friend of my 5 year old), I was thinking this would be a good time for the floor to open up and swallow me whole.

I went from being all blissed out, heart swelling with cuteness and love while watching Elizabeth entertain our closest tablemates with her antics, to feeling the hot blush of utter embarrassment while watching Lady E and Little T get down.

Had I seen some other mother's children behaving that way, I'm sure I would have had all kinds of self-righteous opinions about their parenting, or lack thereof. What kind of mother exposes their kids to anything that would teach them such sexy dance moves? This is what I get for allowing Dancing With the Stars into my home.

It is kind of an anomaly: we hardly let the kids watch anything at all, yet we dutifully tune in to (and record, for our kid who practices soccer late on Monday nights) DWTS. It has gotten a little raunchier over the past few seasons; there used to be far less sexual inuendo. But then, with Pamela Anderson on the show like this season ("Mom, she scares me." -- one of my sons), it was bound to go in that direction.

So class, the lesson for today is: Don't judge another parent if all you see is a snapshot of their life with their kids. You might think, had you been in Rubio's last Friday, that I am a pole dancer who brings my kids to work with me. You might think I encourage them to shake it, baby. You might think I am letting them grow up way too fast.

None of those things is true anymore. If it can happen to me (crushing embarrassment), it can happen to you too. Watch out. You never know when your kids are going to make you look like an idiot.

And if you are not already sucked into the oddly addictive, uniquely American cultural phenomena called Dancing With the Stars, stay away. For the sake of your children and any future embarrassment they might cause you, stay far, far away.

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