I went to a Drama Class Awards Banquet with my 11 year old daughter last night. I was supposed to be her escort, but she spent most of the time running from one group of friends to another. It was one of the most entertaining evenings I've spent in a long time, as I felt like I was in the midst of a national geographic aboriginal documentary. I really had no idea that middle school kids were such different creatures than myself, even though I pride myself in my aptitude with kiddos since I have seven of them myself. But they're different when you get them all together. They begin to polarize and become grouped together amongst themselves, like free floating elements attracted together to form larger more complex compounds. The social strata among them become clearer as I watched kid after kid get called to the stage to receive their awards and witnessed the vastly different responses from their audienced peers for kids who had awards for the exact same achievement. My own daughter seemed to be everywhere at once, running...literally...from one small group of girls with similar properties to another, always with a smile on her face, her unfamiliar black heels giving her fits across the polished tile floor of the auditorium. But she was so obviously happy; it was one of those evenings a parent tries real hard to etch permanently into their memory, ya know?

After the awards ceremony came the dance. Now, I was certain that this was the time to leave, and told my daughter that we needed to hit the road. But she begged so incessantly to stay for just a little while longer that I compromised and told her we'd stay another half hour. I am SO glad we did, because I haven't been entertained like that in a LONG time! The music started...a little Snoop Dogg. I saw a few parents starting to wiggle in place, a few kids were beginning to move towards the area directly in front of the speakers, but based on current activity I was sure I was looking at the climax of it all. How wrong I was, because in only another minute or so, the majority of the kids were there and beginning to bunch tightly in the center of the dance area. Snoop faded to some other rap type group I, of course, am unfamiliar with, but apparently it was the national anthem of middle school kids, because IMMEDIATELY the loosely knit group formed an impenetrable wall of bodies with an arena in the center, and into the middle jumped the absolutely biggest-boned black girl in the whole school and began what appeared to be some kind of grackle mating dance. It actually turned out to be some kind of an unspoken dance challenge, to which another girl responded by jumping into the arena. The two got close enough to feel each others breath on their faces, put their arms into some kind of mishapen wing-like positions, and began vibrating and shaking, going up and down at the same time while simultaneously doing some footwork that I can only describe as amazing. The crowd went wild as they performed this ritual, and soon the contender gave up and another jumped in to take her place in front of the fat girl. With two opponents down, somebody's little brother jumped into the arena (he was obviously not yet in middle school) and busted a move that made my jaw drop. The kid was break dancing big time and in all its glory, hands taking on various gang-like signs, his face boasting a "can't touch this" half smile-smirk, and the older girls starting to dig this youngin. He completes his show by falling onto the floor and doing the worm around the perimeter of the human arena walls and some kind of final spin and flip that got him back on his feet again in perfect time to the music. Oh, My, gawd. Okay, after that first 6 minutes, I was hooked and spent the next half hour amazed, stupified, and utterly impressed. I still definately felt as though I was having the privilege of hosting Mutual of Omaha's Wild Middle School, but I couldn't have found a better way to spend that time. Oh, and my daughter was in the mix, too, doing some kind of "cha cha y'all" and other miscellaneous moves, shaking her "laffy taffy" and such. She was such a young lady in my eyes last night, and seeing her in her element like that, I know she's gonna be an outstanding adult.