March 5, 2001
CYBERCOLUMN:
Life lessons from a sixth-grade dance
___By Brett Younger
___About a month ago, PTA queen Beth Miller asked if Carol and I would chaperon the sixth-grade dance. Carol said, "Sure, it sounds like fun."
___It may surprise you, as it did us, to learn that our sixth-grade son wasn’t thrilled to hear that we were all going to the dance. Graham seemed to view the dance as the equivalent of a death sentence. The irony wasn’t lost on me, a child who was forbidden to dance, now raising a child who refuses to do so. Reverse rebellion is not pretty.
___ Graham began to feel a little better about it when I agreed tointroduce myself by saying, "Hi, I’m Gary Miller."
BRETT YOUNGER
___ In the days before the dance, I practiced lines I would never get to use in my strongest chaperon voice:
___"Put that out."
___"Just what do you two think you’re doing?"
___"Hey, what are you pouring in the punch bowl?"
___ I took the Puritan motto as my own, "Someone somewhere is having a good time, and it must be stopped."
___ I also wanted to give my son some helpful pointers. I tried to think back to dances I went to when I was young, but of course, there were none.
___ I, nonetheless, offered a couple of clever first lines:
___"So, do you come here often?"
___ "Doesn’t this song remind you of Frank Sinatra?"
___ And my favorite: "See that cool guy over there. That’s my dad."
___ When we arrived at Lake Air Middle School, we asked the parents in charge: "Should we be checking IDs or taking pictures or showing reluctant 11-year-olds how to bust a move?" We were told to sit quietly. Our only responsibility was to look old.
___ When we entered the wonderland that used to be the cafetorium, the fog machine was working its magic. Balloons floated to the ceiling, and the floor was covered with ribbons. The light show was vaguely reminiscent of the four-colored red, green, orange and blue spinning wheels that illuminated our Christmas trees in the 1960s.
___ The dance turned out to be five or six clumps of sixth graders--all male or all female clumps--standing around the edges of the dance floor.
___ Every once in awhile, four or five children would hold hands and hop in the middle as if they had pogo sticks while every one else stared at them. Some of the not-yet-old-enough-for-acne boys played with the balloons, looking as out of place as Ralph Nader at an inauguration.
___ The disk jockey shouted into his microphone, "Lake Air, what’s happening?" and, "Scream if you don’t like school." Whenever he said, "Now we’re going to slow it down" the crowd booed.
___ At one point, near the end, my son came over to where we were sitting quietly and cynically said, "Being a chaperon sure looks like hard work" to which I was kind enough to respond loudly, "I wish your father was here."
___ I’ve been reflecting on what I learned from my experience as a chaperon. What might God be saying through my first sixth grade dance?
___Maybe it’s something practical, like invest your money in hearing clinics. They’re going to do very well in a decade or so.
___ Or perhaps something sociological, like my parents had a point or it’s harder to be a kid nowadays or I’m old and feel OK about it.
___ Maybe I should learn something poignant about the universal desire to be accepted.
___ When I looked to the Bible, I found several interesting ideas. In Judges 21, the elders of the congregation suggest that the unmarried men in the tribe of Benjamin go and hide in the fields at Shiloh where they are having a feast. When the dancing starts, each man is to grab a dancing girl, carry her off and make her his wife. It’s not a good text to read at sixth grade dances.
___ King David dances before God in his underwear--also not a good middle school text. The Psalmists tell us to praise God with dance. Ecclesiastes assures us that there is a time to dance. In Jeremiah, God promises that hurting people will dance again. John the Baptist lost his head over Salome’s dance. Jesus said, "We played the pipe, and you didn’t dance." All of these texts are illuminating in their own way.
___ But then as often happens to me when I speculate on the meaning of life, I ended up with the kind of country song that they don’t play at sixth grade dances. The last line says: "When you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance."
___ We can thank God for sons, daughters, Psalms, country songs and the assurance that there is a time to dance for joy. When you have the chance to chaperon a dance, I hope you’ll chaperon.
___ Brett Younger is pastor of Lake Shore Baptist Church in Waco. He will become pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth on Easter Sunday.
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