I did not want to be there. It had been a crazy, exhausting week at work, and all I wanted to do was go home and crash on the couch next to my dog, who likes to watch the same tv shows I do. But I had made a promise, so there I was, waiting in a long line. Stuck. From the moment I walked in, I felt like an unwelcome interloper. The music was predictably awful, made worse by an insipidly glib dj. The room was jammed with *much* younger guys and girls who were adamant about only making eye contact with each other, not with anyone older. The girls were beautiful and tiny -- 30 years of "oh, just another bite" hadn't caught up with them yet -- and almost all were dressed in shiny short dresses and impossibly high heels. The jeans, black shirt, and boots I was wearing made me feel all fifty of my years and then some, as I watched the dance floor from the periphery. I may as well have been using a walker.
"I wish I were young again," said my middle-aged friend Sherry, wistful as we watched the exuberant much younger crowd dance to the loud shitty music. "I wish I had a beer right now," I answered with equal wistfulness in my voice. And we both hung out in the back of the room taking it all in, and shaking our middle-aged moneymakers to the beat of that loud shitty music.
This is how I spent my Friday night. Not out clubbing in some hopelessly misguided attempt to recapture the carefree joie de vivre of one's early 20s, but volunteering as a chaperone at my 13-year-old daughter's eighth grade formal dance. And not just chaperoning. I was helping serve dinner -- a veritable lunch lady -- so I was below the lowest of the low in the middle school pecking order. My status was on par with that of the janitor.
My daughter was annoyed at me for volunteering to be a chaperone. She was afraid she'd be judged for *my* usual embarrassing behavior -- my "excessive" friendliness with strangers and my inability to consistently refrain from using my pet names for her when we're in public. (Two years later, and I'm still in the doghouse for the infamous sixth grade "Hey, Squirt" incident.) But I was good. I only talked to her once during the dance, and for the most part, I kept my big embarrassing mouth shut. Every time I was tempted to compliment a girl on her lovely dress, I bit my tongue and repressed the urge, because I didn't want to ruin her night. No teenage girl is going to be flattered by the compliment on her dress that comes from a middle-aged lunch lady. She might, in fact, be reduced to tears. If anyone's going to cry at a middle school dance, it's going to be due to what some boy did or didn't do or say, not because the lunch lady gave you a thumbs-up on your dress.
I couldn't help but think back to my own middle school dances, much less formal affairs that took place in the gymnasium, with all the girls on one side of the cavernous room and all the boys on the other. From today's perspective, the middle school dances of my youth were more similar in spirit (and looks) to an Amish barn raising than my daughter's dance, which felt more like a non-alcoholic rave fueled by the giddy excitement of young teenagers drunk on the possibilities of life. It was infectious, and even I couldn't help getting caught up in the mood. Watching my daughter fully engaged in unselfconscious fun for three hours more than made up for a night of loud shitty music.
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