Wednesday, 13 June 2007

Shall we dance?

I ran into an old school buddy the other day. We did a whole lot of “ do you remember- ; whatever happened to so-and-so,” before we ended up reminiscing about school dances.

I was in a boys’ only boarding school. Girls were those strange but very interesting creatures only seen on special occasions, like major sports days or at that terrifying spectacle called the Hostel Dance.

The typical Hostel Dance had a row of pimply faced boys sitting at the row of chairs and tables on one side of the school hall with an equally pimply row of girls of various shapes sitting in the opposite row of chairs on the other side of the hall.

Nobody moved for the first 45 minutes, except for the chaperones, usually a very bored housemaster and mistress, forced into preventing premature conceptions from occurring.

There would be nudging and shoving on the boys side, with animated discussion of boobs and butts and who was known to “go all the way”. There was much giggling on the other side of the haal, but as a male, I never knew what was the hot topic of conversation.

Eventually there would be some brave sod, daring to cross the hall to ask for a dance. There was a total hush and 80 pairs of eyes would check if the budding John Travolta was going to be rejected. It was a 50/50 bet as to a possible rejection.

If the girl was brave enough to accept the offer and she stood up to dance, there would suddenly be a mad rush to get a partner, with the pretty girls getting ganged up on , and their lesser attractive rivals gaining instant wallflower status, until one or the other nerd would ask them to dance.

After the first rush was over, a curious phenomenon would take place. The biggest, fattest, pimply and just plain ugliest girls would be the hot favourites being asked to dance. The pretty girls just could not understand why they suddenly were ignored.

Ladies, I have to apologise, ‘boys would be boys”

We were indulging in a favourite (and secret) competition called “Hunt the Grunt”

The guy who managed to get the ugliest / fattest chick (as determined by acclamation) to dance would win the competition.

It was nasty, it was cruel, the guys were laughing at the poor girl who suddenly found herself the Belle of the Ball, but damn she enjoyed all the attention, and all the pretty girls were gnashing their teeth on the sidelines..

Boys can be shits, if they want to be.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh that is cruel and nasty. Don't you find it weird how, in films, all the boys are pimply and gawky while the girls look serenely beautiful with satin bows and not a zit in sight? Certainly wasn't like that at my school - we were all on pimple patrol.