We've been volunteering all day at MoShow, the annual epic show-choir
competition -- starring my supernova-talented niece and nephew, not
that I'm biased -- at my alma mater. I spent the morning wiping up
tables in the cafeteria, which was overrun with polite, tidy, eternally
selfish schoolkids who barely spilled a drop of soda or smooshed a
dollop of ketchup on the tables for me to clean up. How do you think
that made ME feel? What kind of considerate, self-policing monsters are
parents raising these days? Rude.
OBSERVATION: Every high-school
girl in the world has long, straight hair. With the occasional wisp of
coy waviness for the really out-there brazen girls. But otherwise,
judging by their hair, every high-school girl in the world is the same
person.
OBSERVATION: Our country is mired in a socially and
morally devastating epidemic of high-school boys who feel empowered to
make gravely unfortunate hairstyle choices. Gravely unfortunate fluffy
hairstyle choices. With chunky Monkees profiles and enough bangs to
require a background check and a gun permit.
But the real story
of course is that the event is called MoShow and I'm a big ol' Mo and
that's all anyone really needs to bring the narrative of this story
rightfully to me.
To wit: Today's show-choir competition was held
in my high-school gym and everyone had to walk through the
crammed-with-50-years-of-photos athletic hall of fame to get there and
nobody in the rational universe knows why but I was on the varsity
gymnastics team when I was a freshman (don't laugh) without having ever
had even three-quarters of a second of gymnastics training but a
lifetime of sub-zero natural talent (I said DON'T LAUGH) and we took
state that year and there's now and forever enshrined in the Washington
High School athletic hall of fame a state-champion team photograph of my
lithe, toned, muscular teammates looking proud and confident and
accomplished in their form-fitting leotards with me grinning cluelessly
in the background in my droopy, misshapen leotard looking not unlike a
13th-century desiccated corpse in a mold-eaten Mayan burial gown.
So naturally the only picture I'm posting of today's myriad
adventures and accomplishments is of me standing still just as
cluelessly in front of that state-champion team picture in my high
school's athletic hall of fame and being caught in a weird emotional
purgatory between feeling like I've stayed too long at the wrong party
and feeling strangely proud that I did something completely ridiculous
and out of character for me and even though the most charitable metrics
would clearly show I royally sucked at it, I somehow didn't quit and now
I'm enshrined in a droopy leotard melting alluringly off my little
goblin shoulders in the photo timeline of my high school's athletic hall
of fame.
Oh -- and just down the hall from that photo, my
supernova-talented niece and nephew rocked their choir performances
today and made me prouder than any old athletic display ever could.
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