Living in the past

We've been volunteering all day at MoShow, the annual epic show-choir competition—starring my supernova-talented niece and nephew, not that I'm biased—at my alma mater. I spent the morning wiping up tables in the cafeteria, which was overrun with polite, tidy, eternally selfish schoolkids who barely spilled a drop of soda or smooshed a dollop of ketchup on the tables for me to clean up. How do you think that made ME feel? What kind of considerate, self-policing monsters are parents raising these days? Rude.

OBSERVATION: Every high-school girl in the world has long, straight hair. With the occasional wisp of coy waviness for the really out-there brazen girls. But otherwise, judging by their hair, every high-school girl in the world is the same person.

OBSERVATION: Our country is mired in a socially and morally devastating epidemic of high-school boys who feel empowered to make gravely unfortunate hairstyle choices. Gravely unfortunate fluffy hairstyle choices. With chunky Monkees profiles and enough bangs to require a background check and a gun permit.

But the real story of course is that the event is called MoShow and I'm a big ol' Mo and that's all anyone really needs to bring the narrative of this story rightfully to me.

To wit: Today's show-choir competition was held in my high-school gym and everyone had to walk through the crammed-with-50-years-of-photos athletic hall of fame to get there and nobody in the rational universe knows why but I was on the varsity gymnastics team when I was a freshman (don't laugh) without having ever had even three-quarters of a second of gymnastics training but a lifetime of sub-zero natural talent (I said DON'T LAUGH) and we took state that year and there's now and forever enshrined in the Washington High School athletic hall of fame a state-champion team photograph of my lithe, toned, muscular teammates looking proud and confident and accomplished in their form-fitting leotards with me grinning cluelessly in the background in my droopy, misshapen leotard looking not unlike a 13th-century desiccated corpse in a mold-eaten Mayan burial gown. 

So naturally the only picture I'm posting of today's myriad adventures and accomplishments is of me standing still just as cluelessly in front of that state-champion team picture in my high school's athletic hall of fame and being caught in a weird emotional purgatory between feeling like I've stayed too long at the wrong party and feeling strangely proud that I did something completely ridiculous and out of character for me and even though the most charitable metrics would clearly show I royally sucked at it, I somehow didn't quit and now I'm enshrined in a droopy leotard melting alluringly off my little goblin shoulders in the photo timeline of my high school's athletic hall of fame:

Oh—and just down the hall from that photo, my supernova-talented niece and nephew rocked their choir performances today and made me prouder than any old athletic display ever could.