The thing about school dances is that they’re less about dancing or making new friends: no one there actually knows how to dance, and the music is so loud that no one can hear anyone. Rather, school dances are about laughing and jumping and being giddy because everyone else is giddy. It’s about having a great time and having no idea why it was so fun. DA school dances are a bit unique, I imagine, in that many of the boys don’t dress up at all, we spend much of the time being absolute children and trying to catch bubbles (that there are bubbles at all is probably in itself unique as well), and some third of the students started playing poker with bubble sticks. Even so, at their core, all school dances are the same: giddiness for giddiness’s sake.
This post is a reflection on my experience at my last school dance. It’s a bit stream-of-conscious-y because the experience itself was rather all over the place, as well.
The last time I went to a school dance was the 8th grade winter formal. The best thing about that dance was the candy, blue and sweet and sour and delicious. I stuffed fistfuls of that candy into my locker in what I’m sure was supposed to be a surreptitious manner. My classmates spent the dance sitting on tables or pulsing with the music, dressed all glam under sporadic neon lights.
I, on the other hand, spent half the time wandering the empty school halls in a white tulle sakura dress, wondering what I was doing with my life. I didn’t know how to dance casually, squeezed together and bouncing on our feet like overexcited molecules. I did ballet and Chinese traditional, not this weird, monotonous (though perhaps I should describe it as mono-movement)…thing. Even a box step or two would be sufficient to satisfy my dance needs, but even that would not be socially acceptable at a school dance.
Talking was even less possible: their conversation mainly revolved around who liked who and who was with who (which, to my knowledge, meant holding hands, if they’re particularly couple-y; keep in mind, I go to a tiny nerd school). I, being a socially inept human who hung out with a total of two people in my grade, both of whom similarly ignorant of such matters as relationships, knew less than 0% of the necessary context required to appreciate and participate in such a conversation.
Thus, my wanderings.
Even my brother, who I considered even more socially inept than I, spent the dance actually talking with his friends.
At that stage of my life (which is my grandiose manner of saying “For a month or two in eighth grade”), I liked to imagine that I thought about profound, introspective things. I persuaded myself that hopping in place in semi-dark lighting while gossiping was silly and lame while wandering about all alone was a sign of mature soul-searching. It was obviously not because I felt like an awkward outsider: certainly not. To highlight that maturity, I insisted upon wondering where I’d be in a few years and which of my friends I’d retain and trying to label my thoughts as a “midlife crisis.”
It wasn’t a very good midlife crisis. It wasn’t dramatic, it wasn’t interesting, and I forgot about it five minutes later when my friend (the only one of the two I hang out with who actually went to the dance) dragged me off to spin around on the dance floor so fast that I twisted my ankle.
Yes, mature indeed.
I’ll be attending my first school dance in three years tonight. My tastes (or, at least, my mother’s, as she is the only one between the two of us to care enough about what I wear to pick out a dress) have hardly changed. It won’t be quite like the white tulle sakura dress: it’ll be even pinker.
Let’s see if I’ll come up with some other pretentious midlife crisis.
(Spoiler: I didn’t. I might’ve given my friend a bit of a midlife crisis, though, through excessive meddling)
:eyes: :eyes: