Christmas dance

Here are Aisling and Meelyn at the Christmas dance they went to on Saturday evening, both in elegant basic black. These are the dresses I mentioned a week or so ago, saying that we found them at two different locations of the same store, one in New Castle where my parents live and the other here in our city.

Well, you know the store? It was Goodwill. And you know how much those dresses cost? Four-ninety-nine each. Only you know how much I really paid? Five-fifty. For both. Because they were on sale for fifty percent off on the day we bought them. It's something to do with the color of plastic thingie on the article of clothing, but I've never been able to figure it out. So anyway.

Two gorgeous black party dresses for FIVE-FREAKIN'-FIFTY. It was majorly exciting, but the most exciting thing of all was listening to the girls' account of the party when we were on our way home.

The most exciting thing is that this year, the boys didn't sit playing euchre, expecting the girls to come ask them to dance, which is what happened two years ago at Meelyn's first dance. And the next most exciting thing is that the boys weren't paid to ask the girls to dance, like last year. Geez. I'm trying to imagine a world where teenage boys would rather sit playing cards with one another or be cajoled through bribery in order to dance with pretty girls.

There were still a couple of adults who kept encouraging my girls to go ask the boys to dance: like most girls, my girls don't mind dancing with their friends and see no problem with doing that all evening if the boys aren't playing nice. Meelyn and Aisling have been raised the old-fashioned way and Aisling's reply to one mom's explanation that the boys were just kind of shy (oh, you mean those boys over there, wrestling around and twisting each other's nipples?) was, "Well, they're just going to have to step it up."

It was fun listening to them talk on the way home: the good time they had with their girlfriends, the boys they danced with, who was wearing a beautiful dress, which guy was the cutest, the girl who kept grabbing guys to dance with and then doing some kind of hoochie-mama swiveling grind with her hips even though her mother was right there in the room (Uh...hello? Mom? Would you mind not letting your daughter simulate sex acts on the dance floor? Thank you), the music that was played and how nice the party room looked...it sounded like a lovely evening and they both opined that they wouldn't mind doing it again next Saturday, no trouble at all.