SINKING SHIPS

It’s Homecoming week in our fair town. Oh, man, am I glad I’m retired! You see, a number of the high school teachers are required to supervise class float building, and we’re talking the world’s worst floats ever. Seriously. As in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.

Each class is given a small stipend for supplies…maybe $25.00. I can’t remember. And the kids have four hours to create their masterpieces--two hours on Tuesday night and two hours on Thursday night. The sponsoring teachers pick one night to chaperone and pray for the best. Most float building episodes consisted of three or four kids who would work in vain while 30 or more of their classmates hung around doing nothing, or, worse. We sponsors mainly did crowd control to make sure everyone got home alive.

Probably my most memorable stint at float sponsoring was when I showed up early on a Thursday night, only to find that the principal-approved theme for the float had been changed and the side banners read: “Wildcats are Pussies.” This slight alteration obviously got by the brain-dead Tuesday night sponsors but not the Flaming Bore. I ripped up the signage before the principal could stop by and have a heart attack, much to the sadness of the artists, who were flabbergasted at my destruction. Actually, I had to admire their Animal House chutzpah, but there was no way “pussies” was going to make it to the parade. By the time this same class got to be seniors, all they did for their float was sit on an unadorned trailer bed and eat pizza.

After I’d put in about a dozen or so years of the dreaded float building sponsorship, I somehow convinced the other teachers that I would oversee the class hallway decorations, instead. I didn’t care if this involved WAY more time; usually only three or four artsy girls showed up to do the halls, and their work was never an embarrassment, like the floats usually were. A great exchange in my book.

So, when I toodle downtown for the Homecoming parade tomorrow afternoon to see who won King and Queen, it will be with great fear and trepidation to also have my eyeballs subjected to the presentation of the class floats. I hope I am pleasantly surprised, but I’ll have my lifeboat ready.