Fathers, Daughters, and Dancing

I run a little Father-Daughter dance every year for 250 - 300 people... the girls of our school, and their dads.

Here are things I learned this year:

1. Some but not necessarily all Southern people think these things are icky. Some but not necessarily all Northern people, like moi, think they are cute little things where Daddy takes his girl to a dance where the following things happen:

• She dances with her friends and ignores him most of the night.
• He hangs around with other bored Dads wishing the committee hadn't moved this event from the Ukranian-American club, because they had a bar there and at least one game would be on.
• The last song is uber-syrupy "Butterfly Kisses" and every girl dances with her daddy and he feels sad because she is growing up so fast. Carly meanwhile tells the DJ "Man, I hate this song" and he frowns at her.

2. If I say "I don't think we need the extra sub platter because our numbers are down from last year" the person in charge of subs will get it anyway because I was not forceful enough, AND she will go to a different place and not even get that last platter for free like we did last year. She will also neglect to tell them to "hold the onions" causing 110 little girls to say "ewww" over the course of the evening.

3. Dads will come running when they smell fresh coffee, because for many of them this event is a snoozer, but they come anyway because they don't want their daughter throwing a tantrum if she misses the goodie bag. The goodie bags, though "awesome", will put you over budget when combined with that extra sub platter, because we didn't sell enough tickets to pay for all of this stuff.

4. You can set the deadline for ordering tickets to be April 15, so that you can budget more effectively. Go ahead. You will still receive daily phone calls up to the day before the dance asking "is it too late to get a ticket?" Since you don't like making little girls cry, you will say "No, it's Never Tooooo Late" with a forced smile.

4. It is better to move the five foot high stacks of chairs that were jammed against two of the marked EXIT doors, than to go rip the custodians a new asshole and explain fire code violations to them. They won't dare tell you "we really didn't want to have to clean the bathrooms in that hallway so we blocked the doors".

5. Having your high school best friend do the photos is good because she won't give you a hard time when your husband is the only one who doesn't have his form filled out.

6. Not having your wedding ring on (see previous entry, I knocked a stone out of it) is bad. One of the divorced daddies from out of town will ask for your email address "so I can mail pictures of our kids to you" since the girls are pals. The DJ will also pat your ass after making a joke to you and make it seem like an accident, causing the need to look around to make sure this was not seen by Mr. Carly or any of his pals. Because, well, riots at a dance are bad especially when some damn custodian jammed the doors closed.