HOCO.
That’s what it’s called now.
You apparently can’t just say “Homecoming,”
unless you like being called a ‘Boomer,’ and having your teenagers make a Tik Tok about you saying it to make fun of you.
But don’t you dare say “HOCO,” either,
because just like saying “bruh” or singing out,
“I understood the assignment,”
it will send your kids running, shrieking to their bedrooms, crying, asking how you even know that?!
(Don’t ever try to prove you know something
This is their world, and you just live in it.
Sign here_____________,
and initial here_______.
We hope you understand)
For weeks now I’ve been dealing with all there is to deal with when you have two freshmen about to attend their first high school dance.
I’d gone through this before with their older sister,
but she was pleasant, and liked easy-to-manage things like reading thick books about cats.
These middle two could be part of some kind of case study, observed and journaled about.
The shoe shopping alone was enough to undo me.
Like, am I on acid?
Why is the room pulsating like that?
When they were little, I thought nothing was worse than shoe shopping with them.
All the “These ones feel funny”s, and the dramatic wailing over the torturous way their sock seams felt.
I have carried children out of many a shoe aisle in a football hold as bystanders stared,
and security guards wondered if they should stop me.
I just told them,
“We’re fine. She can’t have red stilettos at age three, and this is just the aftermath of her being told that.”
Dear ones, I am here to tell you that was nothing in comparison to the beast that is
Taking a Teenage Girl to Find Homecoming Shoes.
I am only trying to be helpful when I say – You will want a protein snack, something to use as an anchor, and probably some tranq-darts with you.
These shoes are apparently going to end up in some prince’s hand at midnight,
forever changing their future as they rule over a vast kingdom to hear them tell.
My 14 year old, Chloe, wants something so specific I’m about ready to watch some YouTube tutorials and hand-make them myself.
Don’t think I won’t.
I have several special skills, and I may just add another one.
That’s how much I need this to be over with.
After searching two malls, as well as online with no luck, I have determined that, at this point,
it’s going to come down to two things:
Us either happening upon some magical Cobbler Elf whilst on a walk in the Dark Woods,
or me in a dank basement, tanning leather, and learning to make HOCO shoes.
After one exhaustive day spent searching so many places, I dropped the girls off at a movie with their friends and slithered to my room to do what I do:
Exert my absolute best effort even if it took my last breath.
After an hour of scouring the interwebs,
I finally found what Chloe had described she was looking for.
I texted her a picture, excited, offering to place the order.
She texted back words that had me reminding myself to breathe from my core:
“I don’t really like that style of shoe.”
Now, I am an artist with a large focus on being able to visualize things with my mind.
I knew for a FACT this was the exact shoe she’d shown me all day long.
This was the exact same shoe she had described.
You know that thing they do when they are toddlers, where they ask for something then reject it the moment it’s handed to them?
Research shows that behavior lays dormant from about 4-11, then resurfaces again when they turn 12.
At this point I have half a mind to buy 4 Kleenex boxes, strap them to their feet, and wish them well.
On Friday afternoon, the girls informed me that they had missed the time-frame for the early purchase ticket discount.
What would have one day earlier been $25 each would now be $35 instead.
I groaned as I drove
(Had I spent this much time and money on my WEDDING?)
and made Chloe double check the school website.
She pulled it up, and confirmed they had missed it. Yes.
I floated somewhere above myself.
“All that’s left showing is the Couple’s Discount,” she casually mentioned.
The wheels started turning in my head.
Being that they had no official dates,
“Your sister is now your date. Congratulations!” I told them.
I thought the $20 savings was glorious,
but you should have seen their faces.
You would have thought I had told them I’d made them both Lady Gaga dresses.
“I just scored at JoAnne’s on fifteen yards of raw meat!”
Chloe was immediately pressing herself up against the inside of the passenger door.
My best guess is that she was hoping to will herself into a vapor that could pass through the metal and float as just Chloe Particles out into the world.
“Mama! WHAT?! NO! No, Mama. Please! Would they make us take PICTURES TOGETHER?!
They WOULD. Oh my gosh, Mama. They WOULD.”
In her mind she was being forced to spoon her sister, Tessa, and then say cheese right there in the center of the quad.
“Chloe, calm down,” Tessa begged.
“She just wants us to do it for the discount.”
*eyes shifted to me, distrusting*
*long pause*
“I mean, I THINK.”
100% my teen daughters are guessing I wanted them to have the couple’s discount just for the sheer pleasure of the photo package evidence of the time I forced them to spoon each other for all of their friends to see.
The truth is I just want that extra $20 for a bowl of ramen at our local Ramen Gajin.
Heck.
To get it *I’d* be a spoon.
I don’t really know what their problem is, you guys.
When my brother and I were just out of high school we were gifted a free cruise to the Bahamas.
The only catch was that we would be seated at dinner times with all the newlyweds, and they’d have to think we were two of them.
So, I married my brother.
Whatever. So what?
I got unlimited cruise food, and a great tan.
Kids these days are too precious, y’all.
HOCO…
I just don’t understand.
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
