Mom and Son Social

Who could resist this face?

On Wednesday afternoon, Sport brought home a half-sheet of yellow paper. Yellow usually means PTA, so I try to covertly dispose of them before the kids get a chance to read them. Not that I have anything against PTA, in fact you know that we LOVE the Reflections program. It’s just that they usually want me to volunteer for something or participate in something and I would rather know what I’m getting into before the kids know about it. 

Unfortunately, Sport was all over this one…the Mom and Son Social. If we could have put off going through the backpack papers for just one more day we could have missed this one. <sigh>  I avoided the subject for the rest of the evening, hoping that by the time school was out on Thursday that he would have forgotten all about it. Not this time! The kids at school were all talking about it and what they were going to wear. Did I mention that this was a “cowboy” social? I spent my after school hours doing what I always do, chasing to the dance studio, making dinner, and helping with homework. At 6:20 Sport strode into the kitchen in his cowboy attire…a button-up shirt and his scout vest turned inside out. He even managed to scrounge up a cowboy hat. I didn’t have time to change even if I had cowboy attire, so we headed out the door, dropped Scout at the dance studio and stopped a few minutes later at the elementary school. 

We even got two pictures!

The parking lot was beyond full so we hoofed it a block or so down the street. Lots of other moms were escorting their boys although most of them looked suspiciously like older sisters… As we entered the gym, I felt terribly out of place. There were chairs lining the entire room, cowboy music blaring from a huge sound system, and two long lines…one for ice cream and one for pictures. Boys were chasing and fighting and playing tag. Moms were seated in the chairs trying to visit over the confusion. Sport wanted to get in the ice cream line right away. When we finally got to the table, we were each served a chocolate sundae with a plastic spoon. We slid past the game of stomp-on-the-other-guys’-foot tag and found a couple of seats in the corner. You know the problem with a social…neither one of us are social. It took Sport about a minute and a half to down his bowl of ice cream. As he looked around for the trash can, I hopefully suggested that maybe it was time to leave. He glanced around, looking for a familiar face besides mine. “They said there were games,” he replied. That’s about when we noticed there was a hula-hoop contest going on in the corner. Not my cup of tea. But we wandered over anyway and stood in the picture line. There were at least 40 moms ahead of us. Their boys must be the ones chasing each other up and down the hallway. After the hula-hoops, they announced a Conga line. I finally convinced Sport I would hold our place in line and he could join in. The line broke up about 10 seconds after he hooked up and they began doing the Hokey Pokey. When they switched to the Limbo, Sport sidled up beside me in the line. Twenty minutes later we were posing for the camera. (The nice lady even loaned me a pink hat.) 

Even though the party was in full swing, I was more than ready to hit the road. Sport looked longingly at the ice cream line that had gotten much shorter. I glanced around. Big sister-moms were doing a line dance that I didn’t know. Their sons had huge adoring smiles on their faces. I needed one of those. “Go for it!” I agreed and nodded toward the ice cream table. Sport grinned a mile wide and rushed to the front of the line. When he returned a couple of minutes later, bowl in hand, he said, “I’m ready to go.” Really? I could have put him through the ice cream line a second time much sooner if only I had known. Better still, I could have picked up a half-gallon at the store and avoided the whole thing. But then I would have missed making a fool of myself with the Chicken Dance and I think I’m looking pretty good in my borrowed hat…what do you think?