Last night Forth and I chaperoned the Halloween dance at his high school. I should say, “chaperoned.” Essentially we sat on the top of the bleachers and I bopped along with music that made Forth cringe. I also made fun of kids. A lot. There were only two, maybe three slow songs and for the first one, kids stood about a foot apart from each other. It was terribly awkward and we had to laugh. But by the last slow song, established couples were comfortable enough with each other to let their loins brush, and emotions ran high.
Rumor has it a few couples had to be pulled off of each other, but the worst we saw was a girl carry a can of Sprite outside of the cafeteria area and into the gym. I marveled at how ridiculous and young everybody looked, and was glad I only went to one dance my entire high school career, which was Homecoming junior year, and even then everyone thought my friends and I were cool because we dressed in classy matching black. When girls hear a song they like nowadays, they come running into the gym in massive groups High School Musical style, like some huge choreographed number is about to erupt. From up top, it was easy to analyze everyone’s social activity. For example, Forth observed this kid who dressed up like Dee Snider and was trying desperately to dance with a pair of girls who went as Romy and Michelle. He would dance around them a little, flirt with one a bit, and then was shot down because the girls just didn’t even know what he was up to. Later on we watched a boy dressed as Prince William bop around the outskirts of a group of girls, very awkwardly trying to find an opening in. Thankfully they only made him suffer around the edges for a few minutes before one noticed what he was trying to do.
Then of course there was That Kid, the freaking weirdo who floats around by himself and deliberately or maybe not so deliberately tries to weird everyone out and acts the exact opposite of every social norm. He was dressed up as a vulture, with a beaked mask, grey wings and a grey sweatsuit, because the weird kid always wears sweatpants. Always. At one point he craned his neck to look up and Forth and I and I stared back with icy chaperone eyes and got all ready to throw my empty water bottle at him, but he quickly departed.
The playlist was fairly baffling. The night began with Regina Spektor, which, while I love her, isn’t exactly high school dance material–at least not for the kids who attend them. Though it was a Halloween dance, there was no “Monster Mash” and “Thriller” didn’t even come on till the very end. The first slow song was “Yellow” by Coldplay, which I didn’t realize could qualify as a slow song, and then I wondered, weren’t the kids like, 8 when this came out anyway? The DJ played Britney Spears and The Spice Girls as nice throwback tunes, which would have been more appropriate for my age group, rather than high school freshmen and sophomores, and then Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” came on and I thought, WTF? When Edwin McCain’s “I’ll Be” showed up as the second slow song, Forth said it best, “It’s odd, the songs that have staying power.” Ditto.
By the end of the night, costumes had fallen apart (except for the kid dressed as the Joker–kudos to you dude, but next time don’t draw the red up so high), and nobody was wearing shoes. Apparently donning ’80’s garb is still a get-out-of-jail-free card as far as costumes go, and I would like to remind all the girls with their tiny Spandexed asses to savor their taut little bodies, ’cause soon it’s not going to look that good. Like, really soon. Freshman year of college you put on a couple beer pounds, sophmore year you fill out and get the woman-curves, then by junior year you’ve filled out and put on the famed 15, and by senior year, you’re full-blown child-bearing material. Yeah. Just wait.
Ironically, the last songs of the night were tunes from High School Musical and Forth spent the last few minutes chatting up the visiting French English teacher who was there with a group of French English students. The man’s name was Frederic and he was wearing a thin scarf and a pinky ring and had a lovely accent and I think I fell in love a little bit, because American men just don’t do that sort of thing.
Oh yeah-my zombie plan is this: do whatever Forth, Farmacy, and Bearded tell me to.
**Back.
