High School Never Ends

I was home today, for the first time in ages, to watch Eldest do her band thing. I drove 50 minutes through hell, high water, and ghetto neighborhoods to watch her get her band geek on at a Big City High School.

Showing up early, I got roped into helping them load stuff on the field.

As I stood there, watching as acne-suffering teens filed past me, the band director -having correctly pegged me as useless- assigned me to pull the cooler filled with water bottles, entrusting the more important band things such as gong and xylophone to more obviously trustworthy adults.

I watched as the band kids pass me, in awe of the freaks and geeks that band seems to beckon (me and kid included), when the band director/teacher yells at me, "Hey, take it to the sidelines!"

And just as the band is announced, and I'm struggling with an unwieldy cooler on wheels full of unnecessary water bottles -it's 50 fucking degrees people and these kids who are being judged on their performance are certainly not going to stop mid-performance for a drink- I trip over a goddamn speaker wire running from the judges to the field.

And promptly dump the entire, unnecessary cooler full of water bottles all over the track.

In front of stands full of hundreds of people watching.

(Flash back to when I was last minute picked to be a cheerleader when half the squad was kicked off for drinking. Homecoming, 1992. First time putting on a cheer skirt, no idea what the hell I was doing. The rest of the team hated me because I was a goody two shoes with straight A's who worked in the library and ended up as a cheerleader as a fluke. I spent the entire Homecoming game standing there stupidly because I had no idea what to do.)

The stands (today) laughed like they did back in '92, as I got down on hands and knees and scrambled to pick up the water bottle mess I made. A super nice band dad came rushing over to help, "I hate when that happens," he mumbled as we struggled to corral all the stray water bottles rolling all over the field.

I was too mortified to respond.

I'm 40, and still feel like I'm in high school.

Eldest refused to even look at me after, and shook her head- not subtly- when I glanced her way, warning me not to come talk to her.

I slunk away, as embarrassed at 40 as I was at 17.

As the saying goes... High School never ends. And I'm as much of a dork as I was then.