10/7/2023 – The Homecoming Dance
I’ve never actually been to a school dance. My middle school didn’t have anything like this. Well, they probably did, but I was either too distracted with something else or just didn’t care enough to attend. High school was different, though. The homecoming was a big deal and from all the hype, you’d think they’d already finished the school year. People were excited about it weeks before it even happened, and everyone was already making plans way ahead of time. Even before the school year started, I had a friend who out of the blue just texted “Homecoming in October” to every person in his contacts list.
As the weeks went by, the theme of the Homecoming Dance was going to be “City of Lights”. There was a lot of debate on who to ask out and whether you should ask someone out at all. As the weeks passed, people brought in a lot of things for their homecoming proposals. Then I saw a bunch of people bringing in fancy posters with bright letters spelling out “HOCO” on them. As I caught wind of each of these, I noticed a pattern. They were all freshmen, 1st years at Del Norte. I guess I ended up getting scared because I didn’t ask anyone to go with me and just chose to go with my friends.
The dance was scheduled to start at 7:00 PM in the night, and we needed to get dinner first. I put on my clothes at around 5 or so in the afternoon before going to the restaurant we planned to eat at. We had a lot of arguments about where we were going to eat and eventually settled on a pizza place until we called and found out they ran out of reservations so we ended up eating at a Mexican restaurant instead. I entered that restaurant and met up with all my friends. There was HM , RB, RL, and MB, all of whom were headed to the dance. Unlike me, some of them did try to ask out a girl. HM tried to ask out two girls, but both of them bailed out on him. MB asked a girl out but for some reason, it was canceled— I don’t know the full story, but she did say yes right in the moment. RL also was thinking about asking out some “baddies” but ended up not doing it.
Anyway, we all ordered our food at around 5:30 that night. It was pretty good, I ended up having just a burrito and rice, which is what most of us got. We spent most of our time talking about whatever school drama was going on, academics, just normal life. We weren’t the only ones to pull up to that area either. I saw another group of kids show up in the restaurant in fancy clothes— multiple of them. Another group of guys that I’m on good terms with showed up, and they included MG and AB. We talked with them for a few minutes before it was time to head to the actual dance. The dance was about twenty minutes away, so we played Truth or Dare at that time, mostly daring each other to scream something stupid outside the car window. We eventually got out of the car at the place of the dance. We waited in line for about 30 minutes— a lot of kids went, more than I thought I would see. It wasn’t a neat, single-file line. It was just chaos.
It wasn’t that loud in the line— yet. There was a lot of noise. It was hard to go anywhere that would be relatively free of the chattering of high school students, and we could see the bright blue light coming from the inside of the room. The line moved very slowly. I ran into a few friends on the way, but we were all very eager to get inside. After getting past a pathetic security check (They just play around with your backpack and then tell you you’re free to enter), we began to walk down the hall to the door where all the action was happening. Several groups of high schoolers were chattering, adding to the noise I could hear from the inside. I walked closer to the door with my friends I met in the line. These included a new group, including my friend LC and MDG who is the smartest kid alive, as well as BO, who’s a really good swimmer. The four of us walked through the door and…
The first thing I noticed was that it was loud. No, loud’s not the word for it. It was more than that. I doubt it was even sound. It didn’t just smash through my ears; it shattered through my body, and I could almost feel the vibrations running through me. If there’s a sound barrier, the room decimates it. There were people everywhere, sitting on tables, talking, drinking water, and right in the center of the room… the deadly mosh pit. Several hundred kids packed into a square not more than ten meters in length, jumping to the beat of the music. I left the room after about five minutes to recover— I already felt a bit sick from that. I’m more sensitive to sound than most, so going there was way harsher for me. And there was NO WAY IN HELL I was coming close to that mosh pit. It was simply too crazy for me.
The chaotic mosh pit wasn’t the only mosh pit at the dance. There was another area on the outside of the building which was also a mosh pit. The first thing I saw when I went to that area was a lot of blue light moving around. No, it wasn’t a disco. It was actually coming from headphones that the people in the mosh pit were wearing. They were hearing the music through those headphones and you could hear the chorus of whatever song was playing from their voices. On top of that, there was also a balcony area where you could watch the headphones mosh pit from a bird’s eye view, as well as an area for gambling.
As the hours passed by, I spent most of my time talking to friends and hanging out. Of course, I did join in the exciting stuff but I made sure to steer clear of the mosh pit crowd and I did enjoy the music. Some of my friends even danced outside of the mosh pit and I even caught an embarrassing video of a few of them on the side. The dance ended at about 10 PM at night and we carpooled back home. There was a lot of conversation about it in the following days, as it was eventful for everyone. A lot of my friends who didn’t get a date were actually pretty happy they didn’t because they “Wouldn’t be able to do half the things they did at homecoming” if they had gotten one.
My final thoughts on homecoming: Very loud and chaotic, but fun if you look at it the right way. I’d recommend going with your friends if you’ve never experienced this before, just be careful for the noise. It can catch you off balance.
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