HOCO Madness

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #9:

Full Circle 

Last night Scotty and I chaperoned the homecoming dance at our kids’ school. 

Some of us old folks. This photo now lives rent free in my mind, and I will look at it always because Brian in the background is my new favorite thing on earth. He looks like a ghost haunting our selfie.

We have a new milestone - having TWO kids at the high school and TWO kids going to the dance. It’s fun having TWO, but one thing that threw me off guard about this was the extra scheduling required when you have multiple kids going to the same homecoming events all week with with different friends and different groups. Saturday was a bit wild with the “who’s doing what, when, and where?” Fortunately one of those children can drive and get himself to where he needs to be. 

Kid #1: left at 7:30 am and ran hard all day. Came home at 1:30 am. Pictured here at Ensign Peak with date Jasmine. 

Kid #2: I was her personal assistant all day. Followed her around paparazzi style. Was it her first date? Technically, yes. Was it also her birthday? Technically, yes. Are Daisy and Leo the cutest kids on the planet? Technically, yes. Is Daisy a cougar because she is six weeks older than Leo? Technically, yes.

Rawrrr

With my chaperoning gig, a few things have come full circle. First of all, my kids go to MY high school. Over twenty years later, I’m guarding MY halls, standing atop MY commons area stairs, and keeping an eye on kids in MY courtyard… with MY friends and MY husband who went to the same school. 

I tell ya… this is not what I thought about during my lunch hour in Y2K. “Someday I will spend evenings in this building listening to Pitbull and keeping watch over a pile of abandoned strappy high heels while my 17-year-old son gets lost in a mosh pit.”

Actual footage of my son lost in a mosh pit

The other part that feels full circle is my sensitivity to the loud music and the darkness. I spent all night having to ask people to speak directly into my ear because I couldn’t hear a darn thing, and then for the last hour of the dance, they turned the lights off, and I was blind. How am I supposed to supervise the well-being of youths in the dark? Next time I’m bringing a headlamp. I was excited that the dance ended at 9:00 because this old lady needed to go home and experience silence and fresh air (by 8:00 the dance was a hot, BO swamp. The air was so thick and stale. I kept thinking “Y’all smell like you need to go home!”)

Despite the reminder that I’m officially old and come from an entirely different era than the homecoming attendees, this week was a lot of fun. Nicky and Daisy got to go to a lot of events and do dress up days. Nicky is super involved in everything and hardly had a wink of sleep. By Thursday morning he had totally hit his wall and I wasn’t sure if he was going to make it out the door. He was running on fumes, for sure, and probably needs to sleep for three days at this point.

Here are a few more fun photos from homecoming week (they won’t be in chronological order because I’m posting from my phone, and Blogger does what Blogger does):

On Wednesdays we wear pink

HOCO hair trial #36

Nicky trying on his bald cap and goggles for Despicable Tuesday 

Ring doorbell footage of Nicky at 6:30 am on Despicable Tuesday 

Jasmine and Nicky after I dragged them outside for a photo during the dance

Christie and me at the ticket table 

Laurel and me - professional chaperones

Nicky and Addie at the football game “white out”

Read a post about my last chaperoning gig here. Not much has changed.