Homecoming Rituals in Texas
8:17 PM - Wednesday, Sept. 03, 2003
Ask and ye shall receive. . .it was like Christmas today! Email all day long! I thank you, fellow email addicts. . . exhale9203, poolagirl, cruelirony, flyinby, inkdragon, and jamsjunction.
Checking in with the life of the boys today. Son#2 joined Key Club and SADD today. I am still prodding Son#1 to join one. He seems to be leaning toward BPA (business club) if he can get his best friend to join with him. Even though band takes so much of his time, I think it will do him good to branch out a bit.
Son#2, of course, already has his date for Homecoming lined up. Homecoming game is Sept 19th, so not much time to get the mums made. Son#2 has had a steady girlfriend most of the summer. She is also in band and is a real cutie.
Son#1 has not considered the options yet. He did ask a friend last year. But he was in the band, where he had to stay all of the game except third quarter. She was not in the band and they couldn't find each other when he was free. So his attitude is, why bother? I said because there are a TON of girls out there just dying to be asked and EVERY girl wants a mum for homecoming, whether she can sit with you or not! Besides, the guys deliver the mums to the girl the night before the game so they can wear them to school all day.
Now, for the uneducated about Homecoming mums in the South, I will explain. Back in the dark ages, when I was in high school, we had mum corsages that were actually a live mum. I still have mine, pressed lovingly into my high school scrapbooks. The mum is centered on a background of ribbon in school colors. From the mum stream dozens of ribbons with cow bells and other trinkets. Some ribbons are personalized with your name and your date's name and the year. Lots of spirit things on the ribbons. Some people add mini teddy bears, cowboy hats or other decorations.
Usually the girls wears one mum. Obviously, the more streamers and trinkets the better. The tradition has grown. I have seen girls wearing corsages of two, even THREE mums. I have seen streamers so long they drag the floor. Last year I saw a girl that had blinking lights wound in and around her mum.
The boys get a "garter". It is a garter in school colors, with a mini-mum and shorter streamers. They wear that on their arm all day and through the game.
Visiting the school the day of the game is amazing. The noise level just jumps way on up there with all those cow bells clanking here and there.
But it is a BIG deal. You just gotta have a mum! And you can be cool and say you don't care, but you DO.
I think that girls are smarter now than I was in high school, or maybe it is just because their fashion options are much sexier than we had. (Or that we were allowed to have! I bought an extremely modest halter top pantsuit to wear to a senior party and my mother made me return it!! Her daughter was NOT a tramp!) But a tradition when I was in high school was that when homecoming arrived, Fall was official. We wore wool skirts, turtleneck sweaters, corduroy blazers. Everything you see in a Ralph Lauren ad of what looks like a real football fan in the fall. The only problem? It can still be high 80's to the 90's in Sept and October in Texas. So we are sweating to death in our woolen finery, gulping cokes by the gallon to try to cool off. But, boy oh boy--did we think we looked goooood!
Now the girls are at the games in their teenytinyittybitty little shirts and jeans. (Is it fair that ALL teenage girls are so cute??) The funny part is the ones who have pinned their big ole mum corsage to those teenytinyittybitty skimpy little shirts. It can be quite entertaining to watch them keep yanking that shirt up all night so they are not exposed to the world. Some girls have gotten smart and wear their mums on a cord around their necks like a huge pendant. Over, of course, the teenytinyittybittyskimply little shirts.
I pulled out my old scrapbook to show my sons my mums from the olden days. BIG difference. My mum had a scrawny "C" made of purple pipe cleaner in the middle of the mum. I think there were several ribbons and one cowbell. Maybe a little football trinket. That was it, though!
Times have really changed. The bigger the better now. The boys and I made their mums for their dates last year and we really had a lot of fun doing it. I was talking to son#2 about just buying one from this club at school that makes them as a fund raiser. But he said he'd rather make it and personalize it himself--with my help. Yeah! I'm wanted!
So stay tuned to find out if Son#1 gets around to getting a date! I told the boys that girls really do want to be asked. I said at one of my high school reunions I found out there were several guys I would have loved to have dated that said they wanted to ask me out but were too shy. You can imagine how my boys went off in to hysterical laughter over that. #2 said "I gotta remember that!! That'll score big when I go to my reunion. I'll go tell every girl there I always wanted to date her." Jerks. You try to give them a few hints on how girls think but they still keep thinking like MEN!!
What can I say? I think teenage boys are the best.
I'm off to a hot bath and an early bedtime. I'm tired and the hub is gone for an evening of tennis. I can afford to indulge myself!
