Everybody Clap Your Hands

First of all, whenever you hear a grandparent or any other experienced parent say, “Kids grow up so fast.” believe it.

It’s true. As I type the fact that Ethan went to his first school dance last night, it’s not lost that it seems like only yesterday when I was wiping the shit from his ass and putting him up in the high chair for dinner.

As the English Beat once said, “Wha’ppen?”

Mom was working, so that left the job to handle both children in the confines of E’s school up to yours truly. It’s a job that I don’t recommend as any function at E’s school resembles anarchy and a feeling of panic begins to take hold the moment that you realize that you have no fucking idea where your kids have run off to.

That feeling occurred about thirty-seconds after we arrived at the school, where the activity was concentrated to the cafeteria and the gymnasium where a DJ was blaring whatever dance music kids listen to. As soon as we walked into the gym, E ran off looking for his friends, which caused Callista to immediately give chase after him.

Surprisingly, some of the other kids were doing some kind of choreographed dance in the middle of the floor while others were content to just run around and scream. Callista was very taken with the structured dance, and she began to mimic what the older girls were doing. The end result was akin to the Hokey Pokey, but with only her right leg, a move that she continued to revert back to for the rest of the night. I named the dance “The Pokey” since her version did not require her to shake it all about or to turn around. To my daughter, the act of pointing her foot out and in was what it’s all about.

Even elementary kids aren’t immune to the “Cha Cha Slide” or “Y.M.C.A.” where parents have obviously worked with their children as early as kindergarten to learn the appropriate moves. Thank God nobody seemed to have taught the “Hey! Get laid! Get fucked!” part for “Mony Mony,” but I was surprised when my own son blurted out the “Charlie Brown!” part during the “Cha Cha Slide.”

How did he learn that?

When I focused my attention on one child, the other child would inevitably run off into a sea of children to the point where I was forced to make a tactical decision. I felt that Ethan is at an age (he’ll be 8 in a few months) where he knows enough about stranger danger that he wouldn’t allow himself to leave the school or let someone try to abduct him from a school function.

Callista-who will be four in a few months-I wasn’t so sure about since she’s a social animal and will approach anyone who isn’t wearing an Incredible Hulk mask. The decision was made to let Ethan fend for himself while focusing all of my parenting attention on the little girl.

Even this proved more difficult than it sounds, as she would dance around a bit by herself and then scatter off to another part of the gymnasium. While I was close behind her, every attempt to catch up to her was interrupted by the chaos of children with no sense of manners, They would run directly in front of you, pushing any adult out of the way of their destination, oblivious to the words “Excuse me!” or to the idea of respecting authority. I began to wonder if the uprising in Libya had more structure than this sock hop.

The real chaos came at the very end of the dance, when the DJ put on Justin Beiber’s “Baby” to the delight of what sounded to be every girl in attendance. To say that I wasn’t prepared for their reaction is an understatement. I simply had never been around that many young girls whose affection towards a pop star was that intense.

I honestly can’t remember an artist to provide me with that amount of perspective when I was growing up. I was too young to comprehend David Cassidy’s popularity and was too old to really see the Leif Garrett/Shaun Cassidy/Andy Gibb success when it took hold. Then again, I don’t remember our elementary school ever having sock hops or the kind of social events that schools have today.

I think a lot of it has to do with the tremendous amount of funding cuts that public schools have today. Most of the social functions that we have at our school have an underlying theme of generating revenue. We receive more requests for money than homework for our son, and that is something that I was not prepared for. He brings home dozens of papers encouraging parents to buy Target gift cards or any other number of pre-loaded cards that the school buys to sell to parents to generate some revenue. This is in addition to book fairs, box tops, and can drives that the school has on a continual basis. And each one of them comes with an undercurrent of guilt that you’re not doing enough for the school.

The crazy thing is how very unorganized these things can be. I’ve volunteered before and have seen firsthand what happens when you let school administrators and PTA members undertake these events. The best example was when I volunteered to run the fountain drinks for a half-hour, only to notice after an hour and a half later that my scheduled relief was a no-call no-show. It wasn’t until I began looking for an organizer that they realized there was a problem.

I feel bad that schools are forced into this position-I’m the type of person that views education as an investment for this country’s future and feel that if cuts are needed in the budget, they can be found in better areas.

But I regress. Let’s get back to Bieber fever.

The volume of the girl’s scream when “Baby” came on was deafening. I noticed that even some of the girls covered their ears in pain as the person next to them squealed at the top of their lungs. I could tell that their reaction also caught the attention of my own daughter, who continued to sing the chorus to “Baby” for the rest of the night.
The DJ announced that the dance was drawing to a close, and when he declared the final song of the evening would also be a song from Justin Beiber, the girls screamed even louder. I was impressed at how the DJ strategically placed these songs at the end of the night, since the sound of any Justin Bieber song clearly turned every girl between the age of 8 through 12 into an unmanageable crazy.

It also caused their boy counterparts to head for the cafeteria to buy one more giant Pixie Stick before they closed up shop.

“I hate Justin Bieber!” I heard one boy exclaim to his mother as I waded through the crowd in an attempt to make sure that my daughter wasn’t interfering with the crowd’s escalating Bieber Fever.

When the song ended and the lights came on, my own daughter began crying that it was all over. For a moment, I was worried that she was caught up in Justin-mania until it was apparent that it was just a case of some little girl being too tired to understand why she was so upset.

And when she finally does begin to notice the cute boy stars that pop music markets to her, I’m under no illusion that they won't be just as bad as the ones that came before them.