Puritanical Homecoming and Other Musings

Breakfast on Sunday morning was interesting conversation.  It was the morning after the homecoming dance and we were asking the kids how the evening went.  It really wasn’t what I expected.  We were regaled with stories of breathalyzers, security guards and kids being kicked out for inappropriate dancing.  The morality police were out in force.  I was actually shocked to hear all this.  What happened to the days of parents and teachers chaperoning?  I guess it’s not in the union contract.  As for volunteering, I’m a bit surprised no parents were there because you’re a second class citizen in this culture if you don’t volunteer for everything.  What we’ve evolved to is hiring security guards to breathalyze and terrorize the kids at a social function. 

I had confirmation from three different teenagers that there were approximately 20 security guards onsite.  Was this a Charger/Raider game?  Is the TSA on campus?  At least the teens have a healthy dose of teenage rebellion in them.  I was told many of them pretended they were drunk just to mess with the security guards and got pulled over to a secondary inspection where they had to recite the alphabet.  They danced inappropriately just to get tossed out for ten minutes to sneak back in.  I thought Footloose was just a movie.  Was Kevin Bacon at Rancho?  I want an autograph.

This has spurred other thoughts I’ve had on homecoming, but just hadn’t simmered to the surface yet.  For all our trying to stamp out class warfare and racism, it sure is evident innocently and innocuously at the homecoming football game half time.  There is the homecoming court which suggests royalty, which is seniors only, no underclassmen allowed.  All the court is white except for one black which is probably true of those demographics, but what of the demographic of the school being 50 percent latino?  You have the pageantry team rolling out the red carpet and bowing to the court as they walk down.  I could really care one way or the other.  I just find it interesting that no matter how far we go into trying to control things, some things just are uncontrollable like stamping out class warfare and racism and we all know that by just watching the news anymore.

Our hypocrisy blows me away.

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