Beach Night With A Jet-Setter

Daniel has a very "James Dean" manner about him, to cite Amy's paradigm.  In public, he has an interesting mixture of coyness, reservation, coolness and humor which, we think, will probably drive the gals crazy some day.  None of the rest of us are like that.  But he also has another side...

Tonight was "Beach Night" at the boys' school.  It's like a little bit of Spring Break for Northern New England elementary school children, where they go their school in the evening ideally dressed in Hawaiian shirts, bringing beach towels, in some cases, and they pretend that this classic red-brick school-house of the early 1980's is actually Malibu or West Palm Beach.  This coincides, by design, with "Turn off the Screens Week" - a week that we observe rather devoutly at home, although with little lapses here and there.  The idea is that children shouldn't be plugged into TV screens or computer screens, and they should be given other, wholesome things to do instead.  At the Kindergarten, they're having Pajama Night, where nearly everybody - including the senior administrators - shows up in pajamas and the principal reads a bedtime story to the youth; we attended these when Ian and Daniel were each in Kindergarten.

Beach Night is primarily a thematic dance in the gym, like so many other evening events at the children's school.  But it also just *happens* to coincide with the Scholastic Books "festival" taking place right down the hall in the library, so every now and then someone wanders from the gym-of-mirth to the library-emporium down the hall and makes a purchase that coincidentally benefits school programs.  Because Ian was feeling sick and I attended Beach Night tonight just with Daniel, I assumed that we would spend the bulk of the evening looking at books and - in Daniel's case - knick-knacks like superhero pencils and erasers.  And we did spend some time there, after Daniel's initial foray into the gym, where he set down his jacket, procured a bag of potato chips and a Capri Sun juice-box from the snacks table, with my help, and casually walked across the room without showing a trace of interest in the dancing around him.  Yes, we filed off to the library, and I assumed that Joe Cool would spend the rest of the evening there looking at Superhero books.  But after looking at one Lego Ninjago "encyclopedia," he literally led me by the hand back to the gym, where I assumed nothing interesting would happen.

And I would have been right, for a few minutes.  Daniel stood there, observing the room, and we walked into the middle of the dance floor - chaotic as usual, filled more with bystanders than actual "dancers" - and stood around for some time.  And then it happened.  Daniel started writhing, twisting, turning, spinning, whirling.  He was truly electric, and completely devoid of self-consciousness.  He boogied - if anyone still calls it that - through "Call Me Maybe" and that Korean "Sexy Lady" super-hit, and other songs.  Not the slightest bit concerned about what anyone thought of him, very tolerant of my "papa-razzo" presence taking videos and pictures, and he was extremely fast, nimble, athletic, and - of course - self-confident.  Then, when the dance was over, he led me again down the hall, out the side exit, to the Corolla, where he mounted into his usual booster-seat perch, and we went home.

I don't often get to hang out with anyone that cool.

(March 21, 2013)