My First Dance

Sadly or interestingly enough (depending on your perspective) I attended my first dance ever this month. Thankfully I was not the one doing the dancing… it was in fact, my daughter’s first dance. And while the dreamer in me would love to focus on the part that we were experiencing a first together, the realist in me concedes that I was little more than chauffeur and chaperone.

I was good. I did my job. This means I found a table in the back and tried to look cool as I leaned on it the entire night as if it would have collapsed had I removed my weight.

Because I work with students for a living, nothing I observed about that night was “shocking” to me. However, I did enjoy the experience at a number of levels that others may or may not.

1. the majority of the kids were there to have a good (yes, clean) time
2. most of them did… eventually
3. watching them figure out the way to do this was enriching

There they were the geeks and the jocks… the preps and the goths… all in the same awkward place trying to do the same awkward thing – not stand out… those were usually the same ones who stuck out like a sore thumb.

It gave my daughter a chance to hang out with girlfriends – a motive that I naively hope will continue. It gave me a chance for kids to see me outside of the church walls just being a dad. And it gave my daughter and I a common experience that we were able to discuss and learn from many days thereafter.