Coming Home Is Hard

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.