Junior High Expectations

I'm worried about my daughter. You see, in two years she will be entering the junior high school and I'm afraid she's not going to be prepared. I know, she has two more years of elementary, but I have a feeling that's not going to do the trick. It's too much time in between and by then she will have seen and learned too much. I've seen this before, I've been there before, I know exactly what is about to happen...let me explain.

Over the weekend Queenie had a friend spend the night. They had a blast making up dances to Taylor Swift songs. I could hear them giggling as they spun around the living room making the house shake. It sounded like one heck of a party, so of course when I was asked to come and watch what they had created, I couldn't say no.

It was during the first thirty seconds of the routine that I realized we had a problem. When I was her age the dances I put on with my friends resembled something like a seizure with spontaneous claps and arm throws throughout. What I was witnessing was something much for spectacular, it was like watching Dancing with the Stars without the stars. There were spins, there were dips, there were even lifts, this my friend was serious trouble.

Still confused? Maybe this will help. Flashback to twenty or so years ago. Picture a young girl of twelve, sparkles in her eyes and a spring in her step, entering her first day of junior high. That girl was me.

I had waited my whole life to be in a school with the word high in the title. I knew exactly what it was going to be like and I was looking forward to finally having my expectations met. I think by that point in my life I had watched Grease six million and eighty-nine times, so I considered myself an expert on the ways of teenagers. I knew how it would all go down. Star crossed lovers torn apart by social status only to be brought together by a killer duet and stellar dance routine. You could only imagine my surprise when at lunch no one joined my in my serenade. I think you could hear the air deflating from my bubble, it had been popped.

As I watched my daughter twirl around the room I knew that she too would meet the same fate as me. I could almost smell the sweat of the gymnasium as a pictured her walking into her first dance. My heart just breaks thinking about how her ideas of grandeur will be replaced with reality. Instead of boys leading her in the tango she would find that they would only be leading her in a small confined circle.

So, what does a mother do in a predicament like this? I could..
A. Start my own high school and only enroll the Broadway hopefuls. Or
B. Begin holding protests to have Dancing with the Stars taken off the air..because that show is the devil!

Oh, decisions, decisions...if only I had a 1950's angel to sing me what to do.