Homecoming: A Tradition of Separating Mothers and their Money

Back in my day, Homecoming involved a football game, a dance in the school gym, and the heavy scent of Old Spice.

A girl would buy a dress, curl her hair and apply a little make-up and wait for her date to arrive.  Parents would take a photo, tell the kids to have fun, and go back to watching television.

Evidently, parents neglected their teens back then.

Times have certainly changed.

Today's Homecoming mother is expected to coordinate wardrobe, transportation, dinner reservations, photography, flowers, and a pre-dance gathering involving 26 teenagers, 14 mothers, and one father who was told there would be beer.

The kids leave for the dance in a stretch limo.  The mothers follow in an ambulance.

What’s a little galling about all of this is that after spending $300 on a dress and another small fortune on shoes, nails, and a spray tan, you enter your child’s room the next morning to find the dress crumpled in the corner and one shoe missing.

Worst of all, when you ask her how it went she replies, “Fine.”

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Fine?  Just fine!!! “For what I just spent this evening I’d expect you to come home with a tiara, a marriage proposal, and at least three college scholarship offers!”

While the girl moms are overwhelmed with the what to wear drama, boys have their own pre-Homecoming ordeal.  

Again, when I was of Homecoming age, the young man would ask a simple question, “Would you like to go to Homecoming with me?”

That was very straightforward and effective. 

Boys these days are required to come up with an entire production to ask a girl to the big dance. Since when did an invitation to a school dance require the skills of a Broadway producer? Absent that, a boy faces rejection for simply appearing not to care enough to put in the effort.

Consequently, today a boy must construct a poster involving a pun, purchase flowers, enlist three friends, arrange for someone to record the event, and potentially involve a Golden Retriever.   

The irony in all of this is that it’s usually Mom who spends all evening creating the poster while her son sits on the couch and plays Xbox.

My husband proposed marriage with less preparation than my son put into asking a girl to spend three hours in a school cafeteria.

Although, to be fair, my husband didn't have to come up with a pun or write a musical number.

For parents, the best part of Homecoming is taking that photo that will live forever.  But now it’s not just one photo.  It’s a collection of photos taken at one large gathering.  There is the couple’s photo, the friend group photo, the team photo, and finally the photo with all the kids together where inevitably your own child has a pained look on his face and his eyes closed.

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What most parents don’t realize is that while all the photos they take look fine, the pictures where the kids look the happiest are the ones they take and put on SnapChat later.

I don’t want to be one of those parents who torture their child with stories of the good old days and a yearning for simpler times.  Trust me, it wasn’t all great back then.

For example, who decided that it would be a great idea to give a girl a giant mum with a million long ribbons attached all night that she’d wrestle with the entire evening?

A florist, that’s who.

In Texas, these things grew to the size of satellite dishes and needed their own designated drivers.  With all the bells, stuffed animals, and miniature football helmets attached to them the poor girl looked less like a participant in a Homecoming dance and more like the Grand Marshall of a small town parade.

So perhaps Homecoming hasn't changed all that much. It's always been an exercise in adolescent awkwardness, parental anxiety, and the ability of enterprising adults to separate mothers from their money.

The biggest difference is that our mothers got to sit home and watch TV waiting for us.  By contrast, we spend the evening tracking their location and waiting for the call alerting us that it’s time to pick up a carload of exhausted teenagers.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the cherished memories this event makes.

Especially for the florist.

She’s probably retired in the Bahamas.

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