Ben did a solo. Can I just let that sink in for a minute?

The mic was live, and there was no one else on the stage to pretty it up or distract the audience from the tall young man whose lips formed every word. 

Mind you it was still karaoke, in that the speakers blared out both the music and lyrics for "You'll Be in My Heart", which was good because for all the practicing he did his arm still drooped low enough to keep the microphone just far enough away that you could barely hear his sweet voice. 

The annual Lip Sync event was this week, where life skills classes perform a splash of songs for the enjoyment of two hundred people all carefully vetted to be in the audience. The one qualification? 

You loved someone up there. 

This was our third time to attend, so it felt familiar. Not like the first year, when I teetered on the edge of panic that this was a ruse for making fun of kids who don't fit in. Hardly. The whole evening is crafted to make them break open, asking only simple choreography and their triumphant smiles at the end. One group held their cute faces inside of cardboard donuts. Ben's class pulled golden sparkles out of their pockets and flung them across the stage. Another had poodle skirts made of pink and baby blue felt. 

Those smiles. They were as real as it gets. 

Benjamin forgot to hold the mic close enough to catch his voice. He was firing all cylinders to remember the other directives he had been loaded with.

If you were watching his eyes, or clapping along you might not realize he knew the song word for word. 

But he knew it. I knew he knew it. And that is enough.