Our
first themed dance of the year was homecoming and the one power that
student council did wield was to follow tradition to the letter. We
were also allowed to pick the theme song for the dance. I did both of
these things wrong. As I have mentioned I was doing quite well in
debate which was good when it was debate time but not so good when it
was time to get everyone's input and make a reasoned decision based
on all of our ideas. When we considering the theme song I had gotten
mired in the facile existentialism of the John Lennon song Imagine
and I was flogging that horse pretty hard. I lobbied, begged and
cajoled until I got the requisite support and after we had set the
song and theme we produced the promotional materials. I was hanging a
two sided 'IMAGINE' sign in the hall by the dance studio when I got
my first taste of public commentary on my choice. One of the cultured
young ladies from the drill team asked me what the hell that sign was
for. When I informed her it was a sign for homecoming she asked why
it said IMAGINE (capitalization mine). I told her that was the
theme song and that did not please her hillbilly highness. She said
she never heard of that song and that she wanted the theme to be some
godawful country love ballad. I told her that we had thought of using
that song but we decided that music intended for children and the
mentally retarded would not appeal to a broad audience. That smoothed
everything over and she realized that I had made the more musically
and culturally sound choice. Nah, she actually rounded up her cadre
of hillbilly hussys and yelled at me on my ladder and then then went
to complain to the principal and whoever else would listen that they
didn't want a classy song to dance to. I thought it was going to end
there but in the two weeks leading up to the dance there was
significant blow-back over my choice and my fellow student leaders
directed all complaints to me personally. They even considered
changing the theme after the posters and signs were all up but at
that point I was set on making it work and pushed through to spirit
week daunted.
