Fancier than an upper-crust party on the Queen Mary 2...
Wilder than a post-Oscar Hollywood bash...
Yes, this past Saturday was the annual Wingnut Elementary School Daddy-Daughter Dance.
As usual, the attendees were an A-list from Wingnut School grades 1-3, accompanied by their (considerably older) dates. This annual event, which is often mistaken for an FLDS mass-wedding ceremony, is the social event of the season for the young ladies.
The evening begins for most at an elaborate banquet, with swanky restaurants chosen by the gals. Bistros are selected for atmosphere, food, and (most importantly) the current month's Happy Meal offerings.
Marie Grumpy this year chose the elegance of a Denny's, and, when handed a Kid's Menu, glared at the server with obvious disdain and asked for "the grown up menu, the one with salmon on it." Rumor has it that her escort had grilled cheese.
Dresses in all colors of the rainbow were popular among the debutantes. Marie Grumpy was resplendent in a black dress, brown socks, and knee-high leather boots that she found in the costume closet (and was quite insistent on wearing). She completed her outfit with a shark-tooth necklace she'd purchased at SeaWorld last Summer.
Upon arrival at the event guests were greeted by a sumptuous hors d'oeuvre buffet of cookies and juice boxes. They were then ushered into the dance hall, which had been cleverly decorated to look like a grade school gym, with basketball hoops hanging from the ceiling and bleachers along the walls.
And so the festivities began. The floor was covered with balloons, whose popping (as they were stomped upon) added to the loud music and disco light display. One participant described the delightful spectacle as "migraine-inducing". It also led several of the young ladies to break decorum in a light-hearted balloon fight, which escalated to injuries serious enough to require a small band-aid to cover a boo-boo in one victim.
One unidentified father (but we all know who you are, Mike) graced the scene by wearing a HOT PINK TUXEDO to the event. This outfit certainly made him stand out from the rest of the crowd, especially when he danced on top of a table during "YMCA". His young escort was last seen by the ladies room, with a paper bag over her head.
Another injury occurred when a father was assaulted near the cookie table. He'd apparently never seen the Animal Planet show about "never get between a mother bear and her cubs", and didn't realize that it was even more dangerous to get between Marie Grumpy and the chocolate chip cookies.
One father spotted a neurologist, and cornered him to ask about groin pain. He had to yell to be heard over the music, and learned (the hard way) that if the music stops, and you keep yelling, then EVERYONE can hear about your medical concerns.
Another lovely princess had to leave early, after she vomited all over the dance floor. Her escort brazenly told the crowd, "she's been barfing all day, but I figured she'd stop after we got here." A local neurologist who witnessed the event commented that "although it's really not my field, generally a handful of cookies and a box of juice isn't a great treatment for projectile vomiting." We can only hope other parents will heed that advice next year.
The after-party was held at Local Ice Cream Parlor, where several interesting combinations were tried. Marie Grumpy had cotton-candy ice cream with Kit-Kats, while a young friend of hers had chocolate fudge with Gummi bears.
All are looking forward to next years ball, except for the guy in a pink tuxedo, whose man-card has been revoked.
25 comments:
Makes me wish my dad had been the dancing kind. Marie's (Frank and Craig, too) a lucky kid.
Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant. AND I would have paid good money to have been a fly on the wall.
Admit it, you were the one in the pink tux.
Should have told Groin Man that he would have to drop trow for you to really figure out what was going on.
(I have to be somewhat sheepish about the above statement because I *did* harass a physio at an insane house party once about my torn rotator cuff.
I know Karma is going to get me for that 10 fold.)
It's a damn good thing my hubby never had daughters.
I don't have a tux!
I wore dark slacks and a Hawaiian shirt- both of which Marie picked out for me, after spending 20 minutes in my closet.
Claiming the fifth, or whatever. I, unfortunately (very fortunately) have not the slightest recollection of what went on at the Girl Scout father-daughter dance when I was 12, except it was held at something swanky room at Ft Richardson Army Base, and there was a swimming pool where my father had at one time taught me how to swim.
The kids are incredibly lucky to have an involved father. Marie will look back at this when she's older and laugh. That's great!
Sounds like a great time was had by most.
On a less happy note: please, for the love of your grammar sensitive readers, correct the "who's" of your last sentence to "whose"!
my daughter is 27 now. she STILL whines about the way her bio-dad embarassed her at the father-daughter dance. (she was 7)
when she was 11 and her stepdad (AKA the "real dad") were waiting for pizza and singing their hearts out to Right Said Fred's one hit "I'm too sexy" she thought that was the greatest thing since sliced bread. marie is a lucky girl. :)
Sounds like fun! It is awesome that you make time for your kids.
I hope it was as hilarious as your description. I also hope that barfing-princess's family comes down with the plague in exchange for exposing y'all to her stomach flu.
Mrs. Higrens, lighten up - who's cares.
thanks for bringing a smile to my face on monday morning :) i wish i had your writing talent, did you ever consider becoming a writer when growing up? :p
Well, I don't know about revoking the Man Card of the gentleman in the pink tuxedo - arguably, that took more cojones than any other wardrobe choice on display!
Heh... sounds like a marvelous time was had by (almost) all!!
My only beef with the father/ daughter dance events is that they're rarely teamed with something for those of us who a) are mothers, and/ or b) have only sons. I know I am beyond blessed to have two wonderful, healthy boys... but there's a little part of me that just gets a tiny pang when I see these events going on and know there's not a complementary event for my kids simply by virtue of their gender.
I'm a dork. I know. And I honestly do think these things are all that is awesome :) Just a teensy big envious, LOL
Pink tux man sounds like he has a wicked sense of fashion!
I'm glad Marie showed the guy what happens when obstacles pop up between cookies!
great post!
Gotta watch out for those vicious cookie tables. :) (Reminded me of the "confused, hallucinating, incontinent" post and the one a while back about sentence structure making a difference!)
Oh, how did I do that... Crap. I fixed it.
Sounds like a total blast!! Your review makes me wish I'd had a "Father/ Daughter" dance to attend!
This was a most delightfully zany tale. Thank you for it.
@anonymous 10:42: Who's cares? Dr Grumpy cares, QED, bless his punctilious little heart. =)
(Capcha is "loweer": "While the other guys were ogling the tall, stacked babe, the midget could only loweer at her.")
@Captain Foulenough: Of course Dr. Grumpy cares, however, I believe anon @10:42 might be trying to hint to Mrs. Higrens that it's bad netiquette to publicly correct someone. She could have privately e-mailed Dr. Grumpy. That way he could've corrected it and anyone who previously noticed would assume that he'd caught the mistake and fixed it. Any new people who hadn't read the post would be none the wiser.
So next time someone notices a mistake and they just can't let it go, hit the pagingdrgrumpy link over on the right.
So, what did you do in a past life to all of a sudden (it seems to me) attract the school-marms and english teachers (notice how nice I was not to call them grammar-nazis...ooops, shit!)? <= they should have a field day with the punctuation at the end of that sentence!
Seriously, though, Doc, when you confuse its and it's and whose and who's (not to mention whom), it really throws me for a loop. There I am, reading your post, following along quite nicely,and then, BAM! its/it's rears its (you have no idea how hard I had to restrain myself from inserting an apostrophe into that last "its") ugly head: and day turns into night, the Beatles get back together, the sun starts revolving around the earth, gravity reverses its pull, life on this planet as we know it ceases to exist, AND I LOSE THE DAMN THREAD OF YOUR POST!!!
So, have a heart, Doc. Hire an editor. Please. Pretty-please.
What's that you say, Doc? I should go fuck myself? Seems reasonable given the circumstances.
You laugh now, but wait a few years when she is going off to college--you will yearn for the day of the pink tuxedo, I know mine is graduating from college in Beantown and is thinking of living there. Sniff
My older brother and 6 year old niece just had their "Daddy/Daughter" dance. My niece was soooo excited to have a "date" with her Daddy. My brother is "macho man" tough and not very emotional, but he was a good sport and bought my niece a corsage and everything. At the dance they had a booth set up to take pics (like Prom). They got great pics to remember the night. My niece said at the end of the night, when my sis-in-law was tucking her in, that she "was going to remember this night with her Daddy forever."
Kudos to you Dr. Grumpy! I never had such an opportunity with my Dad. If Marie felt anything like my niece, you've just created one heck of a memory with your daughter.
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