Students often have difficulty with the concept of parametric representation of a graph. It is confusing that one of the variables does not "show up" on the graph. In a representation of the form y=f(x) the role of the variables x and y shows up very clearly on the "picture", but when a parametric curve x=x(t) and y=y(t) is drawn in the xy-plane the variable t seems to disappear. The connection between graphs and functions thus seems to be lost. Parametric representations thus strike many students as being a somewhat irrelevant topic in calculus. In this paper we practice with some graphing calculator-aided activities designed to aid in comprehension and to convince students of the usefulness of parametric representations.