Tonight is Genoa's senior prom night.
     Interestingly, I do not feel compelled to drag up my own Senior Prom Night Crap. Other than to say: It Was Crap. GMHS felt that in order to insure that kids didn't drink, the best choice was to have DINNER and PROM together at a hotel downtown. In your expensive prom dress, eating buffet. NEAT. For The Record: I took Jim. I had a recovering mohawk/mullet. We wore matching tuxes. I went because my mom said I would "regret it your whole life" if I missed my senior prom. It Was Dumb. I am not glad that I went. I regret not going.
      But Genoa is there. The LHS prom is at Coors Field. With her boyfriend, who lives in freaking Thornton for God's Sake, but whatever. Harp is not at prom, she is babysitting. Her choice: make money babysitting or spend money and go to  prom? Easy one for her. I can always rely on Harp to be pragmatic. I do love my kids.
     Becuase Prom is Fucking Stupid. Why am I the only one who sees this?
     I quote Buffy The Vampire Slayer: "And this isn't important? This happens to be the dance."
    "It's a stupid dance with a bunch of stupid people that I see every stupid day."

     And THAT is how I feel about the prom. Always have, always will. Scene.

     Now I suspect that Genoa feels the same way. However, she does have a need to feel like she is a part of something outside of theatre. God Bless her, she auditioned to be a graduation speaker, she's playing golf, she is really trying to branch out of her comfort zone. Which is THEATRE. And theatre is where everybody else goes to branch out. But Genoa, having been raised with The Beast of Theatre, has to work to fit in everywhere else. Her comfort zone is where others venture tenuously. Where others thrive and judge and snark and live- High School- is where she is uncomfortable.

    My girls grew up in theatre. With the crazies. The broken, the damaged. I said once that the symbol for theatre was the Statue of Liberty, paraphrased: Give us your broken, your crazy, your disenfranchized, your gays and your creative geniuses. Everyone laughed, but...it is true. It never occured to me that raising the girls in theatre would cause them to be uncomfortable in the main stream.
    And by "uncomfortable", I mean smarter.
    No judgment. But when you are raised around creative minds, honest emotions and playwrights who examine the human condition...you are a step ahead of your peers.
    And you do not, so much, "fit in".
    At least in the general population of a high school. What do they call that in prison? Gen Pop?
    Unfortunately, even inside a theatre you can be perceived as weird. In G's theaco there is fear and judgment and crazy entitlement and privelege.
     Sigh.
     Theatre calls you or she doesn't. In high school it's hard to hear her voice, to feel her loving arms because you have issues and think you have to prove something. So sometimes, you really aren't called at all. She does not want you, but you are determined, or angry, or think you deserve it or your friends are there or whatever your deal is.
     It is interesting to me that in the last ten years, I have watched my theatre department become "popular". I wish I was kidding. The theatre kids are perceived as "popular".
     The Hell?
     What this means is that I am inundated with many who have not been "called".
     And frankly, they are the ones causing problems for those who have been called.
     And that's why Genoa, who has been called, is playing golf and going to prom. Because the influx of High School has made its nasty way to my precious sanctuary.
     Or it could be that she finally just got enough guts to talk to the golf coach.
  
     Meh. Have another glass of wine,  kryssi.