5th Grade School Dance

The rules of engagement

Just before spring break, I started to hear chatter about the fifth grade dance. Ada wanted to go looking for dresses and wanted to know the budget for the outfit up front. I told her it depended on what she needed, and what she liked, a level of subjectivity she found annoying.

We looked at some thrift shops, then at Macys and on Nordstroms.com, and after selecting a dress from some anonymous industrial-wedding-complex-supporting-online-entity that makes junior bridesmaids dresses to order in any color, fabric, or finish, she wanted to know the maximum acceptable height on the heels she wanted to wear *with* the dress. I suggested a half inch heel and tried to sell her on platform Converse; she countered with a 2.5 inch heel with satin ribbons that criss-cross around your ankles and then tie halfway up your legs.

I did kibosh this shoe option

The class took a vote on the theme for the dance. One option was vaguely oceanic, another had something to do with the future, and a third was labeled “glitz and glam.” Glitz and Glam won, but when I asked what the theme meant, in terms of decor, was told “it’s just obviously the best” and that ‘all of my friends voted for it.” I asked if Glitz and Glam had a color scheme, then learned from the parent chat group that it was largely dominated by sequins and sparkles.

The dance is being held in a space called the “gymnatorium,” a name graced upon us by the Department of Education. I imagine black and gold balloon towers and fairy lights strewn around the basketball hoops, lots of glitter, crepe paper around the doorways, bowls of goldfish and juice boxes on foldout tables covered with plastic tablecloths, and parents-who-are-not-me hovering around the perimeter.

Ada updates me that some boys have started asking some girls to the dance. I ask her if girls are also asking boys, or girls are asking girls, or boys are asking boys. So far, she says, only the boys have asked girls, but also that some boys have asked multiple girls, some girls have said yes to multiple boys, that 28 boys all have a crush on a single girl, that just because you got asked and said yes doesn’t mean that you’re actually going to go with the person you said yes to, that being asked as a friend is being worse than not being asked at all, that some people who said yes, then later said no, and that two people did ask her but she’s going with her friends.

I tell her it sounds like a lot of drama, and that it seems like they are spending more time at school talking about the dance then doing any schoolwork. This is verified, when I hear from the parents at the playground that the 5th grade teachers have requested that the kids stop talking about the dance at school altogether because the level of gossip and heartbreak has reached fever pitch and focus has reached an all time low.

I investigate what “going together” means, because according to her it definitely doesn’t mean meeting up beforehand or taking photos together or corsages or coordinated outfits. From what I can tell, it doesn’t even guarantee dancing together at the dance, nor eating dinner together at the meal before the dance, nor explicitly doing anything together in the 5:30-7:30 window on a late June day.

“It’s only 5th grade,” says Ada. “What do you even expect?”

Her dress arrives and is so tight she can’t really sit down or breathe when it’s zipped up, but she insists it looks perfect, to herself, in the mirror. I quietly order the next size up, calculating the time it will take to then package this one up and return it and pray and hope the new one comes quicker than the first. I am both relieved she has a clear vision for what she wants and annoyed that the vision is so laborious.

The new dress arrives a few weeks later and thankfully it fits. By this time, however, she’s already outgrown the shoes with the too high heels that we ordered back in March. She puts the outfit on and takes a selfie to send to friends who also send back their looks. I hear recorded voice notes of affirmation going back and forth. The feeling of heightened tween importance is visceral: the anticipation, the over-investment, the anxiety, the volatility, the excitement.

Recommendations:

• To eat: Due to MTA track work, I found myself wandering through Fort Greene Saturday morning, and had the best sea salt honey sesame focaccia from the Palestinian-American Bakery, Zeena, posted up at the farmers’ market. Dreaming of going back to try all their other offerings, like date mamoul and zaatar focaccia.

• Tween Sandals: I convinced Ada that for daily wear a platform sandal is a better option than a heeled sandal. She loves these Mini Melissa Kick-Off Sandals, both with and without socks. For more tween clothes, check out last week’s Bonus Recs.

• To watch: Hacks Season 5 is truly excellent television, and the best season of this show since the first. The writing. The acting. Hope this wins all the awards. We’re on episode 7, so no spoilers! Love this video Hannah Einbinder posted on IG showing the camaraderie of the crew, which is only joy that exists after working together on sometime hard for a long time.

• To do: Go see the roses at Brooklyn Botanic. They’re popping!

Me + the roses at BBG by my friend Kalli

• Ideal Charcuterie Scenario: You can self-serve yourself a half baguette and $3 snack sizes of cheese and charcuterie from the fridge, grab a cutting board and cheese knife and bring it to the perfect backyard at Covenhoven. More bars need to do this. It is perfection.

• Good pants: My friend Mollie handed-me-down a pair of these Apiece Apart Merida pants and I’ve since procured another. They’re a great length for someone 5’3” (me), with a high waist, and can be dressed up nicely. The other cropped, high waist style that’s really working for me is the Sezane Le Crop pants, which come in a variety of washes and stripes.

Recs, please:

• What’s on your summer reading list?