50's Chaos

That's what's in store for me tomorrow night. And we have already had a taste...

Every year the girls' school has a "Spring Fling" [read: fundraiser/parental torture]. You get to buy tickets and then spend a Friday night at school where your kids can stand in long lines play games, have interesting (sugary) snacks, participate in the cake walk, have their picture taken and dance. They hire a DJ and trick out the Gym and ALL of the kids dance -- they are K - 3rd graders, they don't know that they're not supposed to dance with/in front of their peers yet. They boogy-oogie-oogie all night long all hyped up on loud music and sugar. Parents mostly just oogie.

Now the kids think that this is the best time ever! Whoohoo! They can't wait! For the parents? Well.... there's no getting out of it, really. Your primary function is to dispense tickets and make sure your kids don't get into anything they're not supposed to until you finally get to the Gym (Boogie Down!) and hope that there are other fun parents to visit with. Or in my case, find some people who can read lips and understand gestures. Pointless really. It gets beyond LOUD in there. I am totally screwed when it comes to trying to hold any kind of conversation during the "boogie" portion of the evening. But I digress...

There is also always a theme! (Because what is the point of making everybody come to school on a Friday night to sugar up and dance, if you can't make the kids dress up too! Really?!?! What fun is it if you can't completely stress the Moms out worrying about getting a costume together too?!?!) This year the Spring Fling theme is "50's Sock Hop." (It must be a trend...) Costume wise, the PTO threw all of the Moms a bone this year. The note came home --

"Hey, want some help making a poodle skirt for the sock hop? Give us your color preference and $7 and we'll hook you up with a poodle skirt workshop after school!"

I'm thinking "Hell, yeah!" I don't know how to sew and the girls both really wanted a poodle skirt to wear so I figured I'd pack up my glue gun and we'd be poodle skirted in an afternoon for the bargain price of $14. Whoohoo! Apparently I was not the only one...

Skirt making day arrives (last Tuesday) and armed with my glue gun, scissors and other supplies I headed to the school gym for the poodle fest. Now keep in mind, the girls' school is small (only about 320 students total) and I figured there would be a few other Moms and Daughters there to make skirts too. Holy Crap! Imagine 100+ girls with their parental helpers there to make skirts in the teeny little gym! [Oh, and basketball starts at 5:00pm so try to be done by then, mmmkay?] That's like 80% of the eligible girls at the school. All there. Ready to get gluing! It was chaos squared....

Little girls running through the gym with their skirts on their heads, moms wandering aimlessly holding glue guns, confused grandmothers just trying to keep up, a stray dad or two looking positively pre-PTSD, small clusters of the uber moms trying to look...well... uber. And basically all manner of little girls shrieking, crying, giggling, dancing, twirling... You get the picture. Chaos, baby. Chaos.

K. and A. and I and I took one quick lap around, found our skirts, and with surprisingly little resistance on their part I convinced them that we should gather our supplies and do this project at home. (Thank God they didn't put up a fight!) As it was, just to gather what we needed so we could head for home base took an hour and 15 minutes! I can't even imagine how long we would have been there had we stayed. Good grief!

At any rate, we will be finishing up the skirts tonight. A black one and a pink one both sporting adorable little scotty dogs. They are beyond cute. And tomorrow night we have the Hop -- the girls are soooooo excited. (Much twirling will happen I am sure...)

I am (unsurprisingly) not that excited. But at least I know I will get some cute pictures... I am actually considering taking the laptop and finding my self a nice (though excruciatingly loud) corner of the gym. Even if there is no wifi access, at least I could entertain myself.... What do you think, bad form? Of course the uber moms will frown, but I am used to that.

Anyhoo, I am off to school a bit early. Gotta pre-purchase some tickets.... (The pre-purchase option is the one good thing they have started this year.) At least we won't have to stand in line for that! Ha!