Chaperoning Homecoming

I have more school pride now than I did at my high school or at my college. I eagerly anticipated Friday’s football game against Santee far more than I ever cared about my own homecoming. [Go Cobras!]

After school on Friday, I went with a couple of teachers to a happy hour in a downtown bar. The two guys that I went with used to play high school football for their schools in LAUSD. Drinking some beers, they shared stories about their glory days, and how if these kids played their teams, they wouldn’t stand a chance. We all became increasingly nostalgic as the evening progressed. After a couple of hours, we were ready for the football game. Our current record was one win to many losses. No one is really to blame. Since we are a brand new school, this was our first year to have a football team, and we were still sorting out the kinks (and, er, the fact that all of our boys have soccer bodies, and the boys across town are big and mean). In short, no one was really expecting a win from the homecoming game. Mostly, we wanted to cut our losses short and prepare for the excitement of the next day’s homecoming dance. Who knew the game would have more action?

We scored first! And that’s all the on-field commentary I will give you besides that we won – big time. The play-by-play was a lot more exciting off the field. The Homecoming court paraded around the track field in convertibles. The crowd oohed and ahhhed. I stopped a fight in the stands. Stood right in the middle of two boys, and kept yelling “look at me, look at me, look at me,” until one of the boys actually, well, looked at me. I put both my hands on his chest and shook my head. By then, other teachers convened and the boys were removed. (Boy did I feel confident after that!). One of my students came completely trashed to the game. He was completely white and stumbling past the teacher section in the bleachers. He, too, was escorted out of the field. Ten teachers tsked.

After the big win, everyone was in high spirits and the teachers grew a little nervous at how their excitement might spill over into tomorrow’s dance. I was still too excited about chaperoning my first dance to care. A chaperone! Me! Another example of how I can’t possibly understand how I ended up here.

When I arrived at the dance at 8:30 PM the next day, the students were still pretty tame. They all looked incredibly beautiful. Not too many people on the dance floor yet. Those who were on the dance floor were all clumped in a massive heap in the middle. I dare not imagine what was happening in the middle of that grinding mass. Ew, visual pollution. Ms. Jodry and I were assigned dance floor duties since we were the “young ones” and because the administration likes to make fun of us whenever possible. We had fun, dancing on the sides and laughing at our students. A couple of boys (who didn’t know we were teachers), asked us to dance. After that, I took out my lanyard with keys and ID badge and displayed it proudly throughout the rest of the night. The faculty still makes fun of us for that. The later it got, the more kids joined the grinding mass in the middle of the dance floor. Everyone was starting to look really sweaty. Make-up was being smeared away, and couples were starting to fight and find other sources of entertainment. Cough, cough. I can’t believe I stayed until the end, when the lights come on and the kids see where all their friends ended up. New couples made, old couples fade. Ah, high school drama.

I sneaked off to my car, and drove to meet my old high school friend at a nightclub in Hollywood. By the time I got to Hollywood Blvd., the place was packed. The lines outside Les Deux were huge, parking was $25, and I was exhausted. I looked at myself in my car mirror. Twenty-two years old and too tired to stay out past 11 PM. Skipping the club scene to chaperone high school dances. Somewhere between graduation and now, I turned into a 40-year-old.