MORP

March 2, 2015: Mary models Dylan's "Yes!" glasses.

Spring is on its way, and that means a week of March Madness at the high school. Every day of that spirit-week is a dress-up day, the school's halls are massively decorated, and crazy activities and contests take over at lunchtime. I happened to have lunch duty last week, so I got to see it all firsthand.

One of the decorated halls.

The culminating event is at the end of the week, on Saturday night. Back in the day, we used to call the girls-ask-guys dance Sadie Hawkins, but here in our town they call it "Morp." (That's "Prom" spelled backwards.) The theme for the dance this year was "Glow with me to Morp," complete with bright, glowing, neon colors. The dress code is casual.

March 7, 2015: This is me an hour before chaperoning Morp.

I don't own anything in neon colors, so I settled for pink and a glow-stick choker.

About two weeks before March Madness began, I'd volunteered to chaperone Morp. That was also before I knew my last child would be attending the dance. In fact, on Monday morning he told me how "lame" Morp was and that he didn't intend to go. Then he headed off to his first class.

First period wasn't even over before Dylan texted me: "I got asked to morp." I texted back: "Did you say yes?" He responded: "I'm gonna come up wi creative way but idk." (I'm getting pretty good at interpreting text talk.)

And so, after school, we went shopping for creative ideas. His friend and Morp date, Kenzie, had given him a bright green bucket filled with candies and a glow-in-the-dark star-wand, along with a note, which Dylan promptly lost. He remembered it said something like, "Out of all the people here, you're the star I want to glow to Morp with."

Danielle and Jacob hard at work on the poster.

Thus we decided to go with the glowing star theme, and we made our purchases accordingly. Luckily, Jacob and Danielle came by and were more than happy to help out with the project. In fact, Danielle said this was totally her favorite kind of thing to tackle. I had no idea how tough it was to hot-glue glow sticks to poster board. But it was fun, and they were troopers!

Dylan with the finished product. It turned out cute!

As soon as we arrived at school on Tuesday morning, Dylan went off to find Kenzie and brought her back to my classroom right before first period started. When she walked into the darkened room, this is what she saw:

And then the lights came on and she got to see the whole package: the poster, the glasses, and the purple star balloon with "Yes!" written on both sides. (Our school colors are purple and gold.) I think she got the message!

March 3, 2015: Kenzie and Dylan

Kenzie and Dylan

The gal, of course, plans the big day of the dance, and Kenzie kept Dylan in suspense all week long. Finally, on Saturday morning, she revealed her plans. They went to see a movie in the late afternoon, "The DUFF" (which stands for "Designated Ugly Fat Friend," one of those teen dramedy movies). 

March 7, 2015: Kenzie and Dylan enjoy their pizza..I think!

After the movie, they went to pick up pizza and cheese sticks at Little Caesar's, which they brought back to our house to eat. Then, not wanting to arrive at the dance unfashionably early, they hung out for an hour and listened to music and watched funny You Tube video clips on Dylan's new big-screen TV.

Kenzie and Dylan

Another fun tradition of Morp is that the girls often buy matching shirts (or sometimes whole outfits) for the guy and gal to wear to the dance. Kenzie bought these neon-yellow shirts and personalized them both herself.

Kenzie and Dylan and the Morp tee-shirts.

Kenzie and Dylan and the Morp tee-shirts.

And then, of course, the dance. I only got this one picture there (see below), because the gym was very dark in order to allow the glow sticks to glow, plus the dee-jay's setup involved a lot of flashing lights. (This was before Dylan stole my glow-stick necklace and broke it open to splatter their tee-shirts with glow-in-the-dark slime!)

March 7, 2015: Kenzie and Dylan at Morp

It was a fun but very long night, especially for the teacher who spent 3 hours guarding the back door of the gym (me, in case you wondered)! Next, in about 6 weeks: Prom!