Taylor went to her first school dance on Friday night. Decked out in a sparkly pink and purple top adorned with dream catchers over a denim skirt, chocolate tights and Ugg boots, my sister spent two hours on the arm of her date, Scott. And since parents were strictly forbidden from the school grounds during the dance by the sixth graders, I was the lucky girl who got to spend a Friday evening as a fly on the wall (the only fly in the world that can operate a digital camera and camcorder), there only if Taylor needed help (she didn’t).
Having never attended a dance with a date until my junior prom when I was 17, I got to bear witness, via my much younger sister, the best parts of ‘crushing’ on a boy pre-high school (and all of the attending drama). The smiles on Taylor’s face said everything. There were no teen-charged mixed signals to analyze: she had the time of her life. And there, in the Fletcher School’s cafeteria with ’80s music playing in the background and neon deejay lights painting the air, the fly on the wall was having the time of its life, too – holding assorted cell phones for pre-teens, catching the scenery on camera and bottling up the dream catcher girl’s courage and her date’s kindness for the days to come.