Can We Please Do This Every Night From Now On?

Advocates of school uniforms point out that what you wear affects how you think of yourself -- and thus how you behave. So if you want kids to see themselves as scholars, you shouldn’t let them dress like hooligans. Opponents argue that clothes are an external expression of a person’s inner self, and that we shouldn’t squelch kids’ harmless sartorial individuality.

I agree wholeheartedly with both premises (though not particularly with either conclusion). Which is why it was so inspiring to see our friends and neighbors all decked out like movie stars to ring in the new administration at last night’s Inaugural Gala at the Lakewood Seward Park Community Club. It felt like we were all wearing our hearts on our sleeves: that is, expressing our pride & joy & hopes & dreams through sequins & satin & boas & bowties. And also like we wanted to show ourselves that we are indeed the kind of sophisticated, confident, powerful people who can step up and make those hopes & dreams come true for our country.



The organizers went all out -- from the red carpet outside the door to the Obama/Biden photo op to the incredible array of hors d’oeuvres -- and so did the guests, with Goodwill glitter and patriotic accessories galore. But what really blew us away was the absolute radiance of the twelve-year-old girls. The three-year-old girls were adorable, of course. And we loved watching the eight- and nine-year-old girls getting flung around the dance floor by their fathers & uncles, or circling their slow-dancing, camera-shy parents, attempting to snap an incriminating picture. But there was something about the 11-14-year-old female set that we found especially endearing and inspiring.

We've known most of these young ladies for years of course, but in many cases we hadn't seen much of them since they headed off to kindergarten with missing teeth and skinned knees. The ones we do see regularly are usually wearing muddy soccer cleats, not strappy high heels. And now here they were, whole packs of them, divine in their finery, showing off long legs and budding curves, primping in the bathroom, giggling in the hallway, exuberant on the dance floor. It didn’t matter that the boys spent most of the time chasing each other in and out the kitchen door brandishing mag lights and glow sticks. Once these girls had established a certain social distance from their parents and the other geezers (mostly via patient smiles and subtle eye-rolls), they were in their element.

As we watched excerpts from Obama's inauguration on the big screen, and listened to our friend Curt's wonderful, rousing words about this new birth of hope in our world, and a renaissance of community in our neighborhood, and how the next ten years are going to be the most exciting time in our lives, how this is our opportunity to make the world what we want it to be, and history is on our side, and so on -- we just kept thinking about these magnificent girls coming into their own and taking the world by storm.


And then Michael Franti's "Obama Song" came bursting out of the speakers, and everybody started dancing like crazy.

Earlier in the evening there had been some speculation that if too many of their parents started dancing, the collective mortification of the twelve-year-old girls would cause a giant hole to open up in the middle of the dance floor to swallow them -- or possibly us -- alive. We needn’t have worried. Turns out there's plenty of room in this new renaissance for several generations of boogie.