Sunday, November 11, 2007

Homecoming


Thirty-two years is a long time…

The other day a friend sent me an e-mail that she had gotten which contained some photographs from a 1970’s era JC Penney catalog. The author of the original e-mail was having a great time making fun of the styles, and who could blame him? It was simultaneously hilarious and sobering to see those pictures. To think that my generation once looked that way (bad hair, bad clothes) is troubling…

Anyway, the photos sent me for a brief trip down memory lane, to my senior year of high school and the fall of 1975.

I really was not a BMOC at my high school, probably more of a Medium MOC, but I was an ambitious 17 year-old, and was always looking for opportunities to move into that upper echelon.

One afternoon during homecoming week, I received a call from a cheerleader asking me if I wanted to participate in a kissing contest with all of the cheerleaders during the pep assembly of homecoming week. Even for me, this was a no-brainer, and I eagerly accepted her invitation. I checked with my buddies, Bill and Mark and Doug, and they too had been asked to participate. We saw this as our chance to make the move to BMOC status (although in reality, Mark may have already been there).

The pep assembly went along as pep assemblies did in the 70’s, building toward the grand finale, the kissing contest.

All of the participants were then asked to come down to the gym floor where we were seated in front of about 1500 people (it was a big suburban high school) in a row of folding chairs that stretched across one end of the gym.

We were then told that we would be blindfolded, kissed by a cheerleader, then be asked to rate the kiss. Seemed easy enough.

As we were being blindfolded we were a) eager with excitement that we were finally going to get to kiss a cheerleader and b) eager with excitement that we were finally going to move up to BMOC. We anxiously waited for the cheerleaders…

The PA announcer said “Bring the girls out!” and as they entered the gym it erupted into a cacophony of laughter, hoots, hollers and whistles…

It was at this point that I began to suspect something was terribly wrong…

The girls lined up behind us, and when it was your turn the girl standing behind you would lean over and give you a kiss. As I recall I rated the kiss kind of low. After all of the guys had rated their kisses, the girls were asked to come around and stand in front of us, and our blindfolds were removed.

We looked up to see our mothers standing directly in front of us… That’s right, we all had just kissed our moms in front of the entire high school!

Take a close look at the picture at the top of this blog, it’s from my senior yearbook. That’s me, kissing my mom at the homecoming pep assembly, in front of my entire high school…

I never did make it to BMOC…

P.S.

50 bonus points for anyone who can identify the aerial photograph at the top of the blog.

For you AHS-ers, only 25 bonus points…