High School Musical

A little over a week ago the high school in our neighborhood held a dance to celebrate the end of the year school year (yes, it’s the end of the school year here). I have no way of knowing what exactly happens at the dance because I didn’t attend and it was only for 12th graders. I also have nobody to ask because we have three kids in 12th grade here and none of them went. I also can’t ask any neighborhood kids that went because they don’t even remember going to the dance because they were already blacked out from drinking .

I first figured something was different that day when driving home that night there was an unmistakable thump-thump-thump of the dance floor. When I arrived at the orphanage the music was just as loud. There must have been a lot of speakers because the school is about a kilometer away from us. I asked the kids what was happening and they told me it the end of the year dance. I asked them the theme and they didn’t know so I’m going to assume it was the enchantment under the sea dance.

After several hours of the constant thumping of very non-African techno music, the tone suddenly changed at about 8pm. All of a sudden, the smooth, dulcet tones of Celine Dion came soaring over the neighborhood. The ears of everybody in the orphanage perked up as for the next three hours we were treated to wave after wave of romantic soundscapes from Celine Dion, Bryan Adams, and about 5 other singers whose names I don’t know. What I can tell you is that if it was a power ballad from the 80’s, then they played it.

What was perhaps most perplexing about the whole thing was what the kids said when the music changed. I don’t know if there’s a way to fully describe the oddity and humor of the situation unless you experienced it, but then again I wouldn’t be doing my job if I weren’t trying. As soon as the music changed to the sappy romantic songs, all the kids said, “Ahhh, the dance is starting” I was thinking that it meant like when you’re at the awkward high school dance and nobody is on the floor until Aerosmith booms over the gym (Cause I don’t want to miss a thing). I asked them if they meant that people don’t dance to the other three hours of music we’d just been listening to. They said that it literally meant that they don’t open the doors until the romantic music starts playing and all the other stuff was just a prelude to let people know there was a dance going to take place.

I think that there is really no way to describe just how funny this was to me. Especially since the whole mood of the orphanage changed when the music changed. They had more or less ignored the first three hours of the thumping techno. But as soon as the romantic, power ballad-esque genre started up all ears were instantly glued to the tunes flowing over the night sky.