{these moments}: Get Down with Yo Bad Self

 

He begged.  He was so excited that his little freckles were just about popping off of his face. 

Oh, Mommy, please!  I really, really want to go.  Daddy and Joe and Kyle have to go baseball, but YOU can go to the dance with me.  Just YOU and ME.

You will think I am a terrible person. It had been a long week of things to do and places to go every, single night.  I didn't want to go.  It was so cold outside.  It was so warm inside by the fire.  I just wanted one glass of wine.  They don't serve that at the elementary school cafeteria.  And I was pretty sure that Jeopardy was having the Teen Tournament Week and when that happens, I suddenly feel that I am a bona fide GENIUS.  It is one of the highlight weeks of my life because regular Jeopardy makes me feel like a bona fide DOOFUS. 

Anyway, I kept thinking he'd forget about it.  He didn't.  And truth be told it wasn't really all about the cold outside or the Jeopardy.  It was just that I was suffering from some trauma from the last time I took my boys to an elementary school dance.  It was three years ago. And it wasn't pretty.

When he was in 5th grade, Joe was all excited about the dance.  He was becoming more and more into the social scene and for the first time, he seemed interested in something besides a baseball game or a video game.  Not that this was a development that was all positive.  I had received an email from his teacher that he had become a little talkative in class and was constantly joking around.  I asked him about that.

He said, "Well, Mom.  I can't help it.  I'm kinda funny."

So, Mr. Funnyman and Kyle wanted to go hang out with the cool kids at the dance and I was actually really excited about it.  Steve would stay home with Drew, who was still in pre-school, and I would get a special night out with my big guys.  They got all dressed up.  By which, I mean, they put on hoodies that didn't have Nike or Adidas on them and they brushed their hair.  Joe put on some of that Axe body spray.  And let me just say this:  it is a good thing we don't have pets because I'm pretty sure that stuff could kill a small animal.

We walked into the dance. I pictured meeting some of their new friends, including those of the girl variety whom I never, ever get to see.  I pictured hanging with the other moms and finding out all manner of elementary school gossip.  Before I could picture my next awesome moment though, I realized that my loving children had promptly left me hanging out by the door by myself.

I started to scan the room for a friend of my own when suddenly, a little 1st grader came lunging for the huge double doors.  Before she got through to the hallway, she threw up all over the floor.  Missed me by inches. She slammed through the doors with the principal on her heels.  But before the principal went to the poor child's rescue, she grabbed my arm and said, "Oh great.  You can help.  Can you please stand here and not let any of the children walk through this until I can get a janitor over here?'

So there I was.  I was not the cool, hip mom hangin' and bonding with my boys and their friends. I was not a Dancin' Queen, young and sweet, only seventeen.  I was the poor sap standing by the door on Puke Patrol and darn it if that janitor did not take his own sweet time coming to clean it up.

So you can see the post-traumatic stress I might have been feeling when Drew started in about the dance.

But I looked at his sweet little face and I remembered that the times they are a-changin'.  And I know that this little red-haired, freckle-faced boy won't be little much longer.  He won't want the just YOU and ME for much longer.  He likely won't want me by his side at school or anywhere else.  So we dressed him up and bundled me up and went to the dance.  I had the coolest date on the planet.  We shared a Root Beer snow cone.  We did a scavenger hunt together and answered trivia questions about the 80s, which by the way made my date think I was a bona fide GENIUS. (Take that, Alex Trebek.) We chatted with the little girls and the little boys.  We danced and sang. They even played me some Bon Jovi.  We got some balloons at the end and when we left we made a wish and watched them float high up in the sky.

And best of all, nobody, not one kid, puked.