dances

I went to my first high school dance since 1998, the year I graduated from Halstead High School, last Friday. Willow, my 6 month old baby, joined me. She was excited at first, laughing and smiling... after about an hour, she went to sleep. Being worn does that to her, cuddled all close to her mom.

Some things about dances never change. There are still wall flowers, although now, they aren't the lame kids that can't get a date, they are the kids that are "too cool" for everyone else. There are still the couples that take this opportunity, in the dark lunch room, to make-out and dance as close together as possible. This couple, and there was only one this time, is the reason they pay me $17.10 an hour to "chaperon". I think Willow's attendance helped me out. No one really wants to make-out in front of a baby.

The DJ played the cupid shuffle, about half the student body did the dance, much like the electric slide. When he play Cotton Eye Joe, almost everyone was on the dance floor. They skipped around in a circle... backwards... forwards... I felt like I was in small town Kansas.... because I was. One thing brought every single student onto the dance floor.... even the ones that were "too cool" for everything else. Todd. He requests a song at each dance and he preforms while everyone circles around him. This is amazing for many reasons: Todd is not a cool kid. He's a kid that took his senior pictures with swords and dreams of designing video games, napoleon dynamite style. Todd is no longer in High School. Todd was break dancing, kind of. Good times.