“Cut it out, yo!”

This afternoon I supervised a dance. I’ve supervised plenty of elementary school (“everyone jump to the left! Everyone jump to the right! oh jimmy, please don’t throw up there”) and high school (“you! what do you have hidden in the toilet tank? no I don’t believe that’s where you keep your Bible!”) dances, but this was my first junior high one. It was… interesting.

Also– at my school the dances take place in the afternoon. So yay! No classes! And this one’s a fundraiser so woo, extra goodness!

Here, I have figured them out.

Junior High boys: For the entire week before the dance, must talk about how ‘lame’ school dances are. When asked if they’re going to go anyway, reply that of course they will, because the alternative is to go spend the afternoon in the computer lab and they’re ‘not dorks’. At the last minute 20% of them decide they don’t want to go because they don’t want to risk touching a girl. Are sent to the computer lab instead where they troll around on the Nick, Jr. website. Other 80% of boys go to the gym. Many are wearing excessive amounts of deodorant/cologne/aftershave/body spray (depending on whether they nicked it from their father or their older brother) in spite of the school’s no-scent policy; this is often seen in combination with an overabundance of hair gel. About 30% of these remaining boys spend the first half of the dance in the cafeteria, drinking the warm Sprite that is on offer. This way they don’t have to risk touching a girl, but can still say they went to the dance. Eventually they make their way into the gym, where they take advantage of the relative darkness to run around, give each other wedgies, and wrestle.

Junior High Girls: Spend the week before the dance talking about how ‘lame’ school dances and why even bother going, the guys all act so stupid. Ten minutes before the dance starts, all rush to the washroom where hair is “done”, makeup is slathered on, and perfume is shared liberally between them. They often exit the washroom all wearing the exact same shade of lipstick. Enter the gym, look around at the boys, and 20% of them immediately go to the cafeteria where they find their own warm Sprite. Those who remain in the gym stay strictly to the side of the room where the boys are not.

Dance.

Junior high school girls are very good (flexible) dancers. They probably don’t know what most of the dance moves mean but they’ve got the moves. Junior high school boys are slightly less fortunate in the dancing department. They make up for their lack of rhythm/ability to look cool by running around, wrestling, and giving each other wedgies, or by purposely dancing as if they were being anally probed by an electrical outlet.

During this time, there are always the break-out groups. The ones who like to accumulate in the hallway by the bathroom doors. “Will you ask your friend if he wants to dance with my friend?” can be overheard, amongst high-pitched giggles and urges of “dude! say yes! say yes, dude!”.

When the first slow song comes on, there will be

a) an exodus of boys from the gym to the cafeteria (“The girls are in there! They might want to dance close to our bodies!”)

b) an influx of girls from the cafeteria to the gym (“The boys! The boys are waiting! WE MUST GO TO WHERE THE BOYS ARE!”)

Those who actually dance with each other are of two genres: Members of Genre 1 (aka I’ve Never Slow Danced Before Except Once With My Great-Aunt Nancy At The Last Family Reunion), the far more common breed, stand an arms’ length apart, hands on each others’ shoulders, moving stiffly from side to side.
Members of Genre 2, (aka I’ve Seen People Dancing And This Is How They Do It) rarer but much more insidious, immediately glue themselves together, barely moving, girl’s arms around guy’s neck, guy’s hands on girl’s hips. Occasionally a teacher will have to approach and remove guy’s hands from girl’s bum.

Meanwhile mass quantities of Sprite are still being consumed.

When the dance ends, at 3:05 pm, students leave the gym behind them and come, blinking, out into the bright light of day.

Some of them are thinking “Aw hells yeah, I touched a butt!”. Others are perhaps having thoughts more along the lines of “What the heck is up with guys/girls? They are so weird”. Others still will be thinking “Damn, that wedgie hurt!”

Their lives are forever changed.