Middle School Dance
I chaperoned the middle school dance tonight. Good times. I found that the biggest challenge of the night was keeping parents from going into the dance. So many of them wanted to go in to find their kid. I’d have to tell them to wait until the end, that we don’t release kids and they’d still try to talk their way through somehow. And I was thinking, “Yeah…that’s all these kids want is to have all of the parents lining the walls of the dance.”
I taught some kids how to do different dances including the sprinkler, the lawn mower, the dig, and some mime things (which aren’t technically dances, but do look super cool under a strobe light). We also invented a few dances. Oh, and I showed them how to dance like M.C. Hammer or “Hammer” as he was most recently called. The D.J. said, “We’re going to do some old school!” and started playing Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby.” The kids were like, “I’ve never heard of this before!” And I still remembered all of the lyrics. I think they think I’m a complete dork.
Later in the dance a bunch of kids came up to me and said, “Hey, Mrs. L, we heard that you’re a really good dancer and were wondering if you could teach us some moves.” Some parents were trying to come in at the time, and “Stayin’ Alive” was playing, so I invented a block-the-door-to-keep-the-parents-out-of-the-dance dance. It was pretty sweet. I think our principal would have given me a salary raise, that is if teachers actually got things like raises for just working hard.
I remember back when I was in Jr. High. I loved going to dances. I would totally look forward to them and dance from the beginning to the end. It’s interesting that I married Josh who, to this day, has still never gone to a dance. Wait, I take that back. On our first date we went swing dancing…except he didn’t know how to dance. So, we hung out in the parking lot where I taught him how. I think we went to another swing dance much later. But, he’s never been to the club-type D.J. dance. That’s an experience you just need to have in life in my opinion.