Mown Down

This morning, I dropped my daughter and her friend off at color guard practice. Their enthusiasm is beginning to wane, a bit. Good thing there's only three more days.

When I dropped them, I said that I'd be out mowing this morning, so that if she wanted to get me, she should call my cell phone, which I would have with me. So, of course, she called the house phone, leaving a message that she '..needed my stupid kstmm so bring it right away'. I listened to it twice before figuring out that the garbled word was 'costume', ie, her CG outfit that she'd just gotten yesterday. I recalled seeing it, and hearing her mother say that she'd hang it in her closet, so I dove into there, hunting for ten minutes before calling her mother and asking where the HELL it was....of course. Its in the plastic bag lying in a nondescript heap on the floor at the end of her bed, half-slid off the big pillow and partially covered by a pair of jeans.

So I whipped over there and discovered that it is freaking impossible to pick out one girl in a mass of color guard people, especially when they're marching back and forth in front of the band, who's also practicing their routines that integrate with the CG. I sat there for thirty minutes, occasionally walking back and forth, looking at the piles of bags that the girls had left for my daughter's stuff. All I could recall was that she has a blue and white water jug.

Want to guess what the most popular color of water jug is?

So I called her mother again, who said that she usually had a bright yellow bag, which I then hunted for, and didn't find. You'd think that the two women orchestrating the exercises would be curious about who this guy was, hunting through the bags, but guess not. So I sat some more, figuring that they'd be taking a break soon -- which they did, finally, the whole band trailing off, leaving just the Guard. None of whom seemed to be my daughter. What?

I decided to go back to the school, and as I'm driving slowly away, I stopped at a bright yellow bag. Hmm...that lunch bag looks like hers. So I got out and looked -- and yep, its got our name on it. No water jug anywhere in sight. I stuffed her costume into the yellow bag, and figured 'Better tell her its here'. Went over to the school, wandered the halls for a while, didn't find them. The hell with this. Came back out to the car through a second door, walked past the band members, saw some CG girls sitting on the curb, turned and looked at a second set -- and out of the corner of my eye, saw one casually waving from the first set. Not even bothering to get up. Can't be seen with Dad, I guess.

I told her, and left.

One other thing. Seeing some of those girls move -- both in the band and in the color guard -- I wished that I had my camera, just to capture their grace as they went through those movements. But if you saw a guy standing alone to the side of a group of teenage girls, snapping photos of them with a little digital camera, what would you think he was up to?

Yeah, me too. So, I think not!