Day 11: Evacuate the Dancefloor

The weirdest thing about Highland is its obsession with dance. The obsession isn't the weird part because every small town is obsessed with something: something they're good at, something to form an identity around, something to make you proud of the otherwise you live, or more likely to temporarily forget the otherwise shitty place you live.

But dance. Fucking dance. Dance in all its dark and pathetic forms. Pom dance, jazz dance, hip-hop dance, and worst of all lyrical dance, which basically involves looking really emotional while rolling around on a dirty floor. Apparently we excel at all of these. 

You wish parents could steer their kids to more worthwhile pursuits, like chess maybe, or Model UN. But no. I guess dance provides the greatest vicarious thrill.

Women are sad to start out with. You live in Highland, or you watch Dance Moms (or the new spinoff Dance Moms: Miami!) and you see that age only makes things worse. I do all three of these things. (This is why misogyny is one of my major problems.)

But now we're making our young males dance. Out of the 100 or so dancers at my sister's recital on Saturday, 12 were male. We have a male dance team at the high school. We also have a winless football team. They really fucking suck. A fucking 0-9 football team and 10 potential future star quarterbacks are thrusting their groins and tap-dancing to Luke Bryan dance remixes*. But he has a dick! And he's dancing! What bravery and courage! And all for art!, if that's what you call aimless movement to Lil Jon's "Get Low."

I don't mind dance, besides feeling like a pedophile while watching it and worrying about the actual pedophiles that certainly lurk in the audience. I cringe at the mustachioed fathers in the crowd yelling "Do your thang girls!" And simultaneously I realize this is my future, a lifetime of yelling at my progeny, wanting them to do all I never could, wanting to relive my own athletic glory days**, wanting to escape the hopelessness and desperation that seem to come once you reach a certain age. 

Let us all hope I live this out on football fields instead of packed auditoriums.

*Really. They souped up the beat to "Rain is a Good Thing" and had this 10-year-old guy do a tap routine to it. When I was 10 I spent most of my time unleashing predatory dinosaurs on my guests in Zoo Tycoon. Any objective psychoanalyst will tell you my childhood was better and, as a consequence, my adulthood will be way more awesome.

**If you consider golf a sport, which you shouldn't. Pussy shit, but I could actually play pretty good and all. My kid will be much more manly and athletically talented. I will not let him take the easy way out. IT. WILL. BE. FOOTBALL. (Or chess. Or Model UN. Or theater. Or anything besides dance or golf, because really, golfers are douchebags, and dance is just fucking awful. Do anything other than those things and I'll luv u 4evr, unborn son!)

Life, The Living of

You always want to go home.

When home is Highland, Illinois, you just make sure not to stay too long.

I guess there are things to do. There are friends to see, the few I have still in the area. There are endless video games to play. There is Sports Center, and the repeat of Sports Center, and the repeat of the repeat. There are DVR-ed episodes of Dance Moms. There are blog posts to type out at 3 AM while watching P90 X infomercials. 

There is a Wal Mart. It is a SUPER Wal Mart. If you've lived here long enough, you've gone there needing to buy nothing. If you're under the age of 18, you've hung out there, because hell, there's nowhere else. You may have even practiced an interpretive dance to Total Eclipse of the Heart in the motor oil aisle. It's something to do.

So because there isn't much to be done, you consume yourself with the things that happen. They rarely matter, as you will see.

Neighbor's car has a new bumper sticker. Reads "my son fights for your honor student's freedom." Good they make that sticker, because the son in question sure as hell never made honor roll.

Same neighbor was out mowing the lawn today, shirtless per usual. He's about 5'10" and pushing three bills. And that large gut is covered in hair. Gray, curly, sweaty hair. There are kids in the neighborhood. Guess he doesn't realize. 

Found out my dad listens to conservative talk radio. Lost a little respect. Maybe a lot. He's looking forward to the repeal of Obamacare. I think he's a little racist, but he did vote for Alan Keyes over Barack Obama, and Keyes is black. Keyes is also certifiably insane, but never mind.

Dad works in the healthcare industry. They're doing pretty well, so why change it? He does bring home the bacon. Guess you can't blame him.

Driving around town, saw a lot of campaign signs. It is an election year. Every single one supported a Republican candidate. The county still occasionally elects Democrats, but that's only because of the liberal scum in Edwardsville.

Our Madison County treasurer is one of those Republicans. Apparently he's a sharp dude. Has a bachelors from Illinois and an MBA from Wharton. He also lost his kid while handing out flyers at the county fair. Shocking, considering the fluorescent orange color of the silly campaign polo he and his father wore. Hardly surprising when you consider the extent of his father's dipshittedness.

You feel so sorry for some of the people here. There are the ones who have lived here forever and will continue to live here forever. This place does that to people. It is Norman Rockwell's America, in demography if not in spirit. Other towns have tattoo parlors and black people. It's best to avoid them and stay here.

Then there are the outsiders. The racially diverse. The queers. The actors. The mathletes. The artists. The fake photographers. 

Some fake it well. Some, like this writer, get by. The writer is white and tall and masculine and succeeded in school and played a varsity sport. He has nothing offensive he has to say out loud. Those that don't look the part, that are different in more significant ways beyond some pithy mindset, aren't so lucky.

Oh well. At least there's Columbia to go back to. More things there, though fewer friends to do anything with. You feel awful when you're alone on a campus of 30,000 students supposedly so similar to yourself. Then you realize how many others feel that same way, even those that have the most friends and the best grades and the craziest weekends, and you wonder how to reach out to them, but communicating is really fucking hard so nothing changes.

It all looks so depressing on the page, but it isn't really. Though this place is an insular bubble, there's something to be said for the comfort that provides. Though you can't really relate to most people, at least they all look good and similar and won't steal anything from you, save your soul maybe. Though things could be better, they will never change, and humans, especially older ones, love knowing what to expect. 

The trick is to expect something more than what Highland gives.

It's a good thing I won't be here much longer.