Saturday, September 17, 2011

Middle Schoolers Are a Weird People Group


I had the privilege of chaperoning a middle school dance at the Boys & Girls Club of Corvallis last night. Apparently schools stopped hosting dances a couple years ago, so the BGC started putting them on as a way to provide safe weekend activities as well as an outlet for all that pent-up dance frustration that middle schoolers harbor. It was a hilarious good time. I used to think airports were the best place for people watching, I now think any gathering of middle schoolers is.

Allow me to set the scene of the night: There were about 450-500 middle school age kids from all over the area. The hundreds of kids dispersed themselves among four different rooms that were open for the night. Room one was a small gym for basketball and volleyball, room two was a game room with foosball type activities, room three was the Teen Room that consisted of computers and videogames, and room four was the main attraction of a dance floor. The theme of the night was a black light party, which meant neon colors, white clothing, and special highlighters for body decorating were abundant (most of the boys drew mustaches on themselves since facial hair is still about a decade away for them). The dance floor and Teen Room were both black-lighted for the evening. I spent my night rotating between the Teen Room, the dance floor, and hallway patrol.

There’s no way to recap all the awkward awesomeness that was last night, so instead I shall mark my top five highlights:

  1. In the Teen Room, my first post of the night, a girl walked into the room with the brightest neon yellow shirt with some kind of animal print on it. It was potentially the most obvious shirt of the night. About ten minutes later, after that girl left, a guy came in wearing the most brilliant neon yellow pants. Later, while I was on hallway duty, I spotted those two walking down the hall holding hands. I was glad they neon-completed each other.
  2. As I moved to the dance floor, I quickly realized I was too short to be a chaperone of anyone over the age of five. The majority of the room was taller than me, so I really didn’t have much authority when I tried to tell the kids they were dancing too close (I actually never had the gumption to do that—I did yell at a boy for slapping a girl’s butt though, now that Mama Kate shall not stand for). And for those of you who are curious, no I did not get asked to dance. I may be short, but I either have an old face/stance or I’m still not appealing to middle schoolers. 
  3. Middle school boys smell. Bad. A lot of the boys didn’t really know how to dance, but they did know how to fist pump, which caused a pumping of odor throughout the room. I had to back myself into a corner near the door just to breathe.
  4. It was interesting hearing the music that kids dance to these days. Most of it I listen to or it’s just popular on the radio. Two songs were shockers though. One of which was “SexyBack”. I was so proud that my JT, though out of the music bizz for nearly five years now, is still bumpin’ on the dance floors. The other shocker was Rebecca Balck’s song “Friday”. I thought that song was a joke, not a real play-it-at-dances song. And all the kids knew the words and sang at the top of their lungs. I still can’t get over the lyric about trying to decide which seat to sit in. Most of these kids are still too small to sit in the front seat of their mom’s minivan, so easy choice there.  
  5. One of the best awkward moments encompassed everything that makes middle school great…and awkward. In the hallway, I caught the tail end of a convo in which an elaborately decked out girl was apologizing to a boyishly dressed girl. Her apology went something like this: “I’m so, SO sorry! I really thought you were a boy! I’m so sorry I hit on you, it’s just you looked kinda like a boy, and a cute one too! Like totally the ones I usually go for. I’m so sorry GIRL!” It was pure hilarity. Normally I would feel really bad about this incident, but the boy/girl had a Justin Bieber kind of haircut and was wearing exactly what all the boys were wearing. The boy/girl wasn’t phased by it and just wanted to get away from the weird hitting-on-her girl and go dance. Oh middle school, what a special, magical, awkward time in life. 

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