From the Classroom: Going To Homecoming–Part 2
‘Twas the night before Halloween, and all through the gym
The speakers were set and the lights were made dim
The streamers were hung on the basketball hoops with care
In hope that homecoming-goers soon would be there.
The guys were nestled all snug in their ties
While visions of gyrating girls danced in their minds.
And I, in my jeans, with my GF in tow,
Was greeted by a blast of ear-searing techno.
Running out of good words, I abandon my rhyme
To bring you Seth Perry’s coverage of Homecoming 2009.
What’s up, Annapolis? Many of you may have seen my previous column leading up to homecoming, detailing the details of dance contracts around the county. In this article, I’ll talk about how those played out on the dance floor, and of course the dance itself.
Friday night, I stood near the threshold of the too-small gym, apprehensive. Would the dance be a bust? I had heard that the last homecoming was shut down early. Would I unwittingly do something inappropriate and get in trouble? (My parents gave the standard ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do’ warning, of course. At their respective dances, my dad did the foxtrot and my mom collected the entrance fees.) Would people show up inebriated? (Or, from what I’d heard about past dances, the better question would be WHO would show up inebriated.) Why was my girlfriend not here seven whole minutes after the dance had started? (Can you say nervous wreck?)
The dance, as it is every year, was set up by the senior class, and they were extremely proud of the job they did this year. “Get in here!” they yelled at me as I loitered outside, waiting for my girlfriend to show up.
“I’m waiting for someone.”
“Do you want me to stiletto you?” joked a senior. His date obediently pulled off her shoe and handed it to him.
“No, no thanks.”
They rolled their eyes and headed inside. The music whispered to me as the door opened and closed, beckoning alluringly. But I waited.
My girlfriend showed up. I put my arm around her and walked her to the door.
Actually, I sort of walked her into the door. When you’ve suddenly doubled your width by attaching a whole different person to you, it’s hard to gauge how to make it through doors.
But we weren’t going to let that spoil our evening, of course.
We headed to the table, where chaperones were checking people off a list of those who had bought homecoming tickets. We gave our names, and they showed us in.
The seniors had definitely done a nice job with the place. Streamers hung from the basketball hoops, as did strings of Christmas lights. They provided quite a festive mood.
There was also some sort of light fixture that flashed red, blue, and green fluorescent circles onto the ceiling. I was not aware that many people spent their high school dances staring at the ceiling, but it was still a very nice atmospheric touch.
The food was high-class as well. Assortments of cookies and chex mix were arranged on a folding table, next to coolers and punch bowls that dispensed chilled water and lemonade. A bowl at the entrance held little Dove chocolates, which one of my food-loving friends emptied into his hat when no one was looking.
They had put out little barricades that sealed off corners of the dance floor for refreshments and whatnot. And, to fix the clumping problem, they had put a table in the center of the gym that was about as big as a student’s desk. They put a palm tree on it and prayed that it would keep students from bunching up together.
It was quickly moved, and the clumping began again.
If people really wanted to fix the clumping problem, they’d move the dance into the gym that was fifty feet away and twice the size of the one that the dance was being held in. But hey, they put a palm tree on the table, so I can’t complain.
Seth Perry’s Rules For Life #1: Do not complain about anything involving palm trees.
In their excitement and haste to finish their marvelous decorating, they were not very smart with their balloon setup.
The balloons were on the floor, which meant that every couple of minutes, people who were rocking out would hear a resounding ‘pop’. As a general rule, putting balloons on a floor that people are going to be jumping on for three hours is sort of a no-no.
But I can’t complain. The rest of the decorations were nice. And at least they had a palm tree.
The music was your standard mix of rap and dance songs. I liked it at first, but thought it got old after awhile. Then again, my favorite music is young punks yelling about how much they hate society and drunk man-children anthropomorphizing their reproductive organs.
The dance took a while to get heated up–it always does–but forty-five minutes in, people were jumping around and clapping and shaking it and, yes, grinding.
I took my place in the circle of rhythmically moving guys who were shoving each other around, trying to look cool for the ladies.
We pumped our fists and moved rhythmically. The girls shook themselves out and shimmied relentlessly. We all looked like fools, and we were loving it.
I kept foolishly flailing around, hoping my girlfriend would notice.
She did not. She was texting.
I did not disturb her. I obediently stayed where I was and kept shimmying and flailing, hoping to catch her eye.
I did not. She was texting.
I began to get tired, as did most of the other people in our group. We stopped putting so much energy into our shimmies. Our flailings were much less dramatic.
A possibly inebriated senior jumped into our crowd. “DANCE!” he yelled. “WHY WON’T YOU DANCE?”
We all did.
Except my girlfriend. Who was texting.
I gave up. I decided to go to where the party really was–the center of the mob. My nerd friends and I were content to hang out on the fringes, where there’s actual distance between two people and chaperones don’t think twice about how we’re dancing. But I decided that the heart and soul of school dances was lying in the midst of the gyrating throng.
I dove into the crowd and positioned myself at the exact center. And I realized one thing.
It was HOT.
There were so many people there pressed together that the body heat was tremendous. We could have held the dance in an igloo and the middle still would have been room temperature.
At first I tried to take mental notes for the column. Who was grinding with whom, what exactly was the kind of dancing that was going on, was everyone enjoying themselves…
But then I realized that this was a place to let go. This was a teens-only place (apart from the parent chaperone who kept yelling “Hi, [Calvin]*!” to his son, who was grinding ferociously on a girl and was paying absolutely no attention) where everything was forgotten. No one was denied entrance–nerds and jocks, freshmen and seniors, foreign exchange students and those of us who had lived in America all our lives mixed in the mosh pit. What happened in the hallways, the gossip, the who-said-what-to-whom, all that was forgotten as we jumped and pumped our fists to the invigorating beat of another dance song that sounded just like the last song. Music is the one thing that can really bring a community together, and I saw firsthand, standing lost in the middle of a sea of my gyrating peers, how it does.
I began to jump and pump my fist along with them.
Internal speculation on the beauty of the colorful overhead orbs replaced my anxiety about the inordinate amount of Geometry homework assigned for the weekend. The image of the hot girl grinding on the senior in front of me made me forget all about my girlfriend, who was texting on the fringes of this isolated, escapist paradise.
High school dances are a wonderful thing, and even with the dance contracts and stringent regulations posted by high schools across the area, they’re still fun. A couple of rules on sexual dancing aren’t going to kill the feel.
Rock on,
*To protect the guilty, real names were not used.
Category: COLUMNS, From The Classroom
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