An Incomplete List of Awkward Situations (special high school dance chaperoning edition)

When you show up to chaperone the high school dance, and all of the school doors are locked.

When you can’t hear anything over the music, and you have to speak improvisational sign language to everyone all night.

When your chaperoning station is right by a set of bathrooms that are locked, so you spend all night telling kids they need to go pee upstairs, except none of them can hear you, so you use the aforementioned sign language to say “PEE! UPSTAIRS!” every five minutes for three and a half hours.

When your chaperoning station is below some stairs and you can see up all the girls’ thigh-length dresses whenever they walk down them.

When you spend all night handling teenagers’ phones and taking photos for them, and you have no idea what kinds of diseases you’re being exposed to.

When you make all the kids from church pose for photos with you.

When a girl comes running toward the locked bathrooms holding her dress in place after a wardrobe malfunction, and you have to sign “UPSTAIRS!”

When the same drunk cowgirl tries to go to the locked bathroom with a different person every fifteen minutes.

When a girl asks you to hold her purse, and you think she means while she’s getting her picture taken, but then she leaves and runs off into the crowd, and you’re left there holding her purse wondering if it’s like the airport where you need to report unattended luggage, and you find yourself making a plan to throw yourself on the purse to save the children in the event that a bomb goes off. 

When you realize you’re married to Galdalf.

“You shall not pass!”

When the school police and administrators take off down a hallway together, and you start wondering about that purse again. 

When (after a bunch of really, really awful songs) Whitney Houston comes on, but you can’t “Dance with Somebody” because you promised your kid you wouldn’t embarrass him. 

When you smell that a girl has really bad B.O. and you just want so badly to help her out, but there’s nothing you can do.

When your kid hugs you and his boutonnière pin stabs you in the nipple.

When the last song ends and the lights come on, and you’re like “Alright! Who’s gonna say the closing prayer?”