It's about damn time someone addressed the elephant in the room: school dances.  For decades now, we as adolescents accepted the horror, the emotionally traumatic experience of a school dance.  Our parents encouraged us to go, our peers expected us, and the media blew the entire occasion out of proportion with examples like Footloose and Back to the Future.

I survived several school dances and I will tell you right now, Kevin Bacon never showed up to one and never would my entire graduating class have banded together to turn a mill into a suitable dance hall, even if Kenny Loggins did serenade us the entire time with songs about being free and heaven helping the man.  Nor did Micheal J. Fox make an appearance with a prepared guitar solo in hand and I know I didn't but did anyone ever feel especially enchanted or under the sea while at a dance?

I didn't think so.  It's practically impossible to feel anything remotely positive while at a mandatory school dance. Even if you do gather the courage to ask a girl to dance or get lucky enough to be the one asked and therefore rescued from the lonely corner of cowering teenage girls, you stay about six inches apart from each other (leaving room for Jesus if you're at a Catholic school, leaving room for your hormones to rage at any other school) which doesn't really help in elevating the romance of the moment.   Not to mention the all too intimate atmosphere created inside the same gym that the basketball team sweats in during the winter and everyone else sweats in during assemblies and pep rallies throughout the year.  Yes, the humidity in the air that the poor girls with curly 80s Jennifer Beals hair try to counteract with hairspray and gel: that’s the lingering sweat of your peers.  Breathe it in.

But wait, there’s more! Yes, not to worry, there’s more factors contributing to this school dance ritual. 

Has anyone thought to argue with the sadistic reality that dances are only forced on us during the most awkward and insecure time in our lives?  There are no dances before 6th grade, when crippling insecurity hasn’t rooted itself so deeply in your growing-pained bones, and there are hardly any formal dances after the age of 18, when everyone is mature enough to know how to ask and accept a dance, or at least give it a shot.  They only occur when we are so hormonally unstable that getting a blue fruit roll up in our lunch instead of a red one could set us off.  We worried enough about the shirt we put on or whether our mom kissed us goodbye when she dropped us off in the morning, why on Earth did someone decided to pile on school dances?  Because that’s exactly what teenagers need: more opportunities for peer pressure and social anxiety. 

So if you’re a boy, you worry about asking a girl out and there’s the matter of how to ask her out and which girl and when to do it and where to do it and how many of your friends are going to post it on Snapchat (earlier generations didn’t have to worry about this at least) and what. If. She. Says. No?!

Well, you may as well just curl up and die right there on the cafeteria floor.

And if you’re a girl you worry about what to wear and whether or not someone will ask you and if someone does, you have to say yes to the right person because obviously who you go to the seventh grade dance with is a vital decision in your life, and what about if no one asks you?  Do you go by yourself and hope someone asks you to dance during one of the three slow songs or do you stay home with your cat and a Hillary Duff movie?

And let’s not forget the fact that social dance isn’t taught anymore so if a slow song does come on and you do happen to have a partner, you don’t have a clue where to put your arms and where you should look and whether or not it’s normal to have your feet stepped on or to be the one stepping on the girl's feet every other second.

Does anyone see a benefit here?

I was talking to my friend about the violation of humanity in forcing only adolescents to attend formal dances and he’s of the opinion that it’s the administration giving themselves an opportunity to watch middle and high schoolers alike suffer.  And while it’s a humorous and possible reason, I don’t know that it’s all the way true.  The majority of administrators and teachers hate school dances.  They have to haggle and barter and threaten one another's parking spots just to get enough chaperones and, especially for high school dances, they spend at least half the year trying to rally enough funds to host said dances.  'Do it for the children,' they tell parents as they stand diligently behind the Prom Fund donation box during soccer games.  Unless your child is Homecoming King or Queen material, they'd prefer that you didn't 'do it for the children' thank you very much. 

But parent guilt is an all powerful persuader so Mom or Dad pay the recommended $10 donation and  eventually the school gains enough money to put on the Homecoming or Freshman dance or the all hallowed Prom and all the students buy their dresses that they'll be tugging at all night, whether their boobs are too big or too small, and the high heels that they can't walk in yet and will inevitably ditch at the door and suits that always hang a little awkwardly on shoulders that haven't quite filled out or arms that are too long for the sleeves.  They will huddle in groups, their palms dripping with sweat and their hearts terrifyingly rabbit-like, as if awaiting to be herded on to the train for Auschwitz.  Then 'Choo, Choo!'--"Hero" by Enrique Iglesias comes on and it's time to accept your fate and get on the train (ask the girl to dance/await your suitor in the corner) or bolt for the bathrooms to wait out the song.  If you're like I was at my Freshman dance in high school, you'll choose option B and wait out those lingering, humiliating 3 minutes in the bathroom with 30 other girls.

So maybe next time you attend a school function and there is a tempting, harmless-looking little donation box for the upcoming Winter Wonderland Dance, just remember that whatever you put in that box is going towards the emotional scarring of your already-fragile adolescent child.  And you'll probably get stuck with the therapy bills, or at the very least, the tears at the end of the night.