Then and there and here and now.

As I've said before, I come from a pretty big city. A suburb of San Diego, as a matter of fact, probably one of the biggest cities in America. My stepdaughter is entering a period of her life that I remember with great detail and great fondness. I called it Middle School - she calls it Junior High.

I was a "popular" girl back in California, so I did a lot of social functions. I remember almost every dance I went to (I even remember a lot of what I wore - of course it's hard to forget bicycle shorts and neon, neon, NEON!!). Some I went to with my friends, some I went to with one boy or another, and some I even went to by myself. Middle school dances were pretty awesome.

I knew my stepdaughter's first dance wouldn't be the block party that my middle school's were, but I was still pretty shocked when I went to pick her up and the entire6th, 7th and 8th grades could all gather into half the cafeteria. In my eyes it seemed like a party at someone's house. There couldn't have been more than 20 kids there. I was even more suprised when one of the other mothers mentioned it was a "really good turnout."

Some things still catch me off guard. In a way I'm kind of sad that my kids won't experience the wonderful childhood I had before I moved here (I moved to Illinois when I was 15 and my school experience after that was downright awful - and the only dance I went to was Senior Prom and I went stagg), but on the other hand I know that schools out there are different now then they were when I was a kid - and I can imagine that since there is now a huge fence surrounding the entire school that dances aren't as cool, even if just for safety reasons. I would hate to be constantly worried about my kids in a school area where there are gangs and school shootings and drug problems.

There is less of a chance of that in a small school. Here we have tornados and snow days, there we had bomb threats and smog days (and earthquakes, although I don't remember ever experiencing an earthquake at school). Here they have smaller classes (a LOT smaller) and a lot more one-on-one attention from teachers, there we had lots of different people to get to know and lot more emphasis on science and math and less grammar and history. There you could be whoever you wanted to be and people liked you if you were a little different. Here, not so much.

So my kids will have more their father's school experience, and in some ways that's great, and in other ways just makes me sad. Seeing the Junior High Dance really made me kind of sad - but Poinsettia really enjoyed it so she at least has this awesome memory for her adulthood. I tried not to mention my Middle School dances because I don't want to sound like I'm dissing her tiny school - but I am constantly bombarded with seeing how her life is compared to mine - and liking mine a lot more LOL!

She has the difficult job of breaking me in to all these new experiences - by the time my other kids get up to her age I will have gotten used to it. I think I seem more distant to her because I get lost in my own memories while trying to sort stuff out while seeing what she's doing.

But as long as she's happy, I'm happy.