Paradise City Dance Party

When Dylan and Grady announced that Etna Elementary was holding its first-ever Valentine's Day Dance, I feared it was going to be like the last school dance I attended.  I had visions of low lights, bathroom vomit, spinning disco balls, and awkwardly trying to dance to the slow-fast song, "Paradise City."  Thankfully, the reality was pretty much the opposite.

For starters, this was most likely the first "real" dance any of these kids had ever attended.  No one had any idea what was supposed to happen, which made it great.  It started as all dances do: with no one dancing.  But there were snacks, I know because I was generously offered cups of pretzels by the snack patrol boys at least seventy-five times.  The girls mostly huddled in little groups and the sweaty boys chucked bouncy balls at each other.  A couple of the bold parents herded a few kids into small dance circles and pretty soon those circles got larger and larger and the boys who weren't playing on the climbing wall joined in and then, BAM, a conga line formed and it was on like Donkey Kong.

Kids bounced around, parents worked out old moves and the cafeteria suddenly transformed into Soul Train.  I was even asked to dance!  Does it count that it was Grady who asked me?  It does.  Dylan and I danced to Bob Marley (of all things) and Grady and Regina squeezed in until the four of us swayed and sang, "This is my message to you-oo-oo."

Since the lights were already fully on, and the DJ was just a boom box playing Pandora, no one knew when to quit.  We finally checked our watches and realized maybe the best thing about an elementary school dance on a Tuesday afternoon was that last-dance came early.  There were no weird slow songs to wind this sucker down, just some pop candy song from the radio and a time to clean up announcement.  What a perfect ending.