Part 1 of a Homecoming Tale
There was the lunch table. We don't usually sit together, but that day it was established. Sam was sitting next to Kwamel, on the left side, and on the right, Anne was doing her homework. We had all put our instruments down in front of the lunch seats, which ended towards the middle of the room, where the Pizza Line and Concession stand was set up, and where I my mom was selling candy to my friends. Behind the concession stands is the Grand Staircase of who in YO is Here Today. I had two slices of pizza in my hand, wrapped in tin foil, and a water bottle.
This is DCYO during lunchtime on a Saturday.
"I just. I. Well ok you guys, so like yesterday I had to go to homecoming game, yeah? And that was nice and all ok except for it wasn't. Ok? Please listen. I'm sorry, that sounded mean. Ok but yesterday I had to spend two and a half hours of my life standing out in the cold, and it was rainy, and my football team lost twenty-nine to zero! And then I couldn't even see the game because these shirtless boys were directly in front of me as mock cheerleaders, and it was most uncomfortable." DCYO is a lovely time for me to vent, because everyone is widely different, and the people I sit with don't go to Blair.
This is when Sam and Anne and Kwamel began to laugh.
"It's not funny! It took forever! And I was freezing and it was rainy and ugh they lost. I mean they lost!"
"I'm sorry," Kwamel is a mediator, he's the friendly type who wants you to feel ok. He's one of my best friends.
"Well. My homecoming game, I'm sorry, We're a pretty good team. That sounds awful. My game was cancelled last week and the referee wasn't even there!" Sam is one to talk about sports, but when he's not he's a good friend with substantial things to say, which never include rude comments.
"This is why I never go to Homecoming Game!" I have never heard Anne give positive feedback, or really say many positive remarks ever. She reads the classics for fun. It's fascinating.
"And you guys! You know what? I have to go to Homecoming Dance. I mean the dance. With dancing. Or grinding. I have to be with I have to go to Homecoming Dance! Oh God!"
"Calm down. Sucky schools have sucky dances. Don't go if you don't want to go." Sometimes Kwamel was too much of a mediator
"I went to mine and it was fun, but I go to an all boys school. The girls just come from places." Sam is a good friend who talks a lot.
"This is why I don't go to any school related events." This is why Anne is positively, or perhaps negatively, Anne.
This is when all the other crew comes to the table. It's most of the YO kids in 11th and 12th graders. They're all nice people, and half are sports obsessed. Some are busy with academics and doing homework. Others talk about their lives the entire lunch period, and bother people with humor. I don't know everyone at the table, but there's not much room for clique drama in orchestra. There was, and that was painful, but that was during elementary school and another tale of a sort (which I don't quite remember).
"I JUST DON'T WANT TO GO TO HOMECOMING, KWAMEL." Usually I talk to Kiera, Anne, and Adia, but Anne was stuck in European History, and Adia was stuck in sports practice, and I think Kiera sat at the other end of the table. In truth I wasn't talking to Kwamel.
He to whom I was talking was at the closest end to the table, close to the edge of the cafeteria, which was stocked with stale fruit to be sold Monday to eager students. After school, I go into the cafeteria, and there's a large refrigerator heated or chilled to a weekend temperature. This is what school meals look like. He to whom I was talking is not stale, he's very attractive, and he had on very memorably fashionable red pants. He is Dutch, and from Holland, and he speaks using British terms.
I've had a crush on him since the sixth grade, when all of the DCYO cliques had sprouted from their Elementary roots. He is very Dutch, and very polite, and he stutters when he talks. Once we were to play a motown medley piece, and he told me he hated "I'll be there" by Micheal Jackson. I thought he was an interesting fellow. We haven't really become very good friends, until now, and our friendship was recently broken because we're also intense rivals. We've always played Violin Super Mario. I've always been level up, first chair, teacher's favorite; When he was in H level I was in I.
Now he's in YO and I'm in JO, or the complete orchestra above me. He saved the princess and brought the flag down. He won the game.
That''s why I wanted him to hear me. In a perfect world, he would've saved me. He would've said, "I can accompany you somehow to the dance, no matter the tickets and such. I will get you and me through the gates with my awkward Dutch Charm. I will admit to you that was not a fair audition because you are better than me. We will become friends again. We will arrive in a limo or whatever. We will dance like all of the cheesy 80's movies. We will be very fashionable. I will be the date to the dance even though I have a girlfriend and such-"
I felt a tap on my shoulder. It's not much of a pleasant moment, in any case, to have one interrupt perfect worlds. It even worse of a case when this person is your 10 year old cousin.
"NATALIE!" I try my hardest to embarrass her. I think this shows my love.
"Hi Aidan." She's more apathetic than a tenth grade teen debating whether to go to one of the most seminal dances of the year dreaming of dances with a red panted Dutch boy.
Natalie had come to tell me she was going to New York City for a program with John's Hopkins. One day, she'll sit at the table, and she'll be the one in the crew doing homework but also causing havoc over who stole her Reese's while she wasn't looking. Natalie had also come to tell me strange things were afoot in the Fifth Grade. Two of her friends like each other, like like each other, and she doesn't know what to do. They won't even talk to each other! And you know what they did, they went on and made her the mediator, in case you didn't know what that means, that's when you have to talk to people through them.
Natalie's language is contagious. I was beginning to feel I didn't know as much as she did about relationships, or school, or what a mediator was, or why 80's movies were starting to sound not like High School, but the Fifth Grade.
Anyway, Natalie has to get her friends to talk to each other. I mean, why do they even like each other in the first place! What's my advice? I don't have any. I have some, but I'm not of expert experience. First, Natalie, you're in the fifth grade. Let it flow, just be a kid that's what High School is about, you know, the drama and all that. For now there's High School Musical. And don't even follow that drama! This is why you need to watch Veggietales. Veggietales rules. You know when I was your age, Natalie...
Natalie didn't care. I was a lame actual High School Student who Didn't even want to go to the Homecoming Dance.
I wanted to go to homecoming because it meant fairy dusted dreams of my attractive Dutch violin rival and me in a Grease style slow dance with all of the other Homecoming attendees and because it was the staple of all High School Movie Staples. High School Movie Staples are so because they're really just the Fifth Grade. That's why I got rained upon. It was never a staple at all.
They're drama for the not dramatic. Youth invisibility. The teenager before the kid. The kid after the teenager. We're still kids. It's a staple because I'm young and impressionable and I'm too tired of being immature. But it's all about being immature. Fifth grade drama because that in high school isn't comparable to the television. I've already gone to homecoming dance. The drama I had in fifth grade was High School Musical. It was Pretty in Pink. I've already been to my homecoming dance, and now I'm just left to what's left of the Very Sorry Teenage Condition.
"See you later!" Natalie's not one to be phased. She doesn't care how much I embarrass her. I'm still the model junior to Troy Bolton.
It was 11:30 and the end of lunch.
"Good luck at homecoming," Kwamel said.
"Hope you have a nice time," Sam left the table.
"Dances are stupid." I'm not sure how Anne would know since she abstains herself from school activities, but I was afraid her point was affirmative. Negative. I'm not sure which.
It was 1
I decided to settle the matter with my mother and Kwamel's mom
"You don't go to homecoming to dance, or grind. You go to have fun. Really you go to find that person across the room" Kwamel's mom, Ms. Christian, is a wise woman.
"Who is that person?" I was naive.
"It's just that person. The person you'll be with. So you keep going to that party and that party until you find out there is no person across the room, in that room of course, and what you gotta do now is go somewhere else where there is." Ms. Christian was saying homecoming was a lot like 16 candles, but I won't exactly find my Jake. It was settled. Homecoming's just a fifth grade Urban Legend. Besides, Dutch boy wasn't going to be there, and I didn't like anyone from my school.
"But you have to go to that first party to see if that one person just might be there"
I was hoping that one person was a friend too, but maybe the legend wasn't so.
Peace
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