fellas, i did it. i attended a middle school dance. i’ve always thought they were dumb but at the same time i’ve wanted to go to one just to see if it was anything like how thucdan told me it was, or if it matched up with any of the movies i’ve watched. let me tell you, it was exactly how i thought it would be.
my school was holding a spring fling on friday night, april first for all seventh and eighth graders. tickets could be bought for five bucks beforehand or at the door. i had made up my mind that i wasn’t going to go because i assumed i had tennis that night. turns out i didn’t, but i still wasn’t sure if i wanted to go or not. on friday all my friends were talking about the dance and i still hadn’t made up my mind. as i walking to my car one of my friends pulls me aside and gives me this entire speech on why i should go. it went something like this;
”thuc! you have to go to the dance.”
“no i don’t?”
“but you do!”
“and why is that?”
“because (insert convincing reason here) and you’ll miss out if you don’t go.”
“i’ll think about it.”
so i thought about on the car ride home. and then i decided i was going to go. it was only for two hours and five bucks so why not? anyways once i got home, i called mother and informed her about the dance. then i threw on a skirt and shirt. doing my hair was slightly a hassle since i can never get one side to look like the other. once i finished, mother came home and drove me to school. on the car ride there i was wondering if i had made a mistake. well, too late now.
i showed up about 15 minutes early for two reasons; one, to buy my ticket since i didn’t buy it a week prior to the dance cause i’m not a loser, and two, because i wanted to hide out in the bathroom and cry a little bit before that dance started. i’m kidding, i didn’t cry. but i did hide out in the bathroom before the dance started. i realized i arrived a little bit too early and that the gym wasn’t even ready by the time i bought my ticket. but after walking around the halls aimlessly for about 10 minutes, my two friends arrived. i’ll call one of them gru and the other one paige. now gru and i had a mutual agreement through text that we would be matching. she in fact, did not match with me. she matched with paige. i’m not mad about it. anymore. anyways a few minutes after saying hi and chatting, palm tree arrived. her name isn’t palm tree but she’s like six foot so it makes sense.
it was 5pm so we went into the gym and hid out in a corner waiting for the rest of our friends. it took awhile for everyone to get here so for the first 30 minutes of the dance, it was just a bunch of kids in huddles and some low music playing. but then a bunch of people started arriving and they turned off the lights so everyone was jus round of yelling at each other. my group that i had arrived with basically split up, palm tree and paige went for food and gru and i went looking for our two other friends. i’ll call these two kimpossible and mila. when the four of us were united we just kinda talked until the dee jay guy put on some spanish song and all the hispanics went crazy cause apparently it was a cool song. anyways gru kimpossible and mila all knew how to dance to that song and i obviously didn’t but mila took my hands and had to show me how to. i don’t think i picked it up too well but it felt like i did and i was having fun just shaking my hands with mila and shimmying back and forth. i’m not gonna lie, i had a lot of fun. it was great to just grab my friends’ hands and make them dance with me even when they looked so miserable. the entire time, i was just laughing and talking with my friends while grabbing their hands and dragging them over to dance with me. i knew that if i thought it was fun, then it would be fun. so i just kept the mindset that this was going to be great. and it was. i had a great time.
towards the last 20 minutes of the dance the dee jay guy told us that he was gonna play the last few songs and a few kids started retaliating. i didn’t really care, i had enough fun and my social battery was starting to run out. i have this friend. we’ll call him domino’s pizza. because that’s his name. another spanish song came up and i didn’t really care cause for the last few spanish songs i just danced with mila. but somehow i got separated from my group and found myself talking to domino’s pizza. he’s a good friend of mine and when i told him i didn’t know how to dance, he grabbed me and we started dancing. it was pretty cool since i don’t really know any dances but domino’s pizza was pretty good at it and pretty much guided me the entire way. the bad thing was that someone had taken a video of us. normally i wouldn’t mind but they showed me the video and i realized how bad of a dancer i was.
i got over it in approximately 7 seconds.
and then i went back to just dragging random friends of mine to dance with me.
basically, throughout the entire night i assumed that it was just gonna be awkward and weird. but i got comfortable with the people around me and i didn’t really care at that point. i would recommend going to school dances. even though thucdan gave me the idea it was gonna be weird she still made me wanna go. and i did. and i don’t regret it. i had so much fun. too bad i didn’t get to go last year cause of covid. still, for my first school dance, it was awesome
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