The school dances at my junior high were really awful! Well I can only attest for one and only dance. The Valentine’s Day dance of 1996. I was in sixth grade. When I had gone to the combined elementary school and junior high the kids told me that the Valentine’s Day dance was a big deal at the school. The kids told me dances were a big deal because only the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades could go to the dance. They said the Valentine’s Day dance was one of the biggest dances at the school.

I had changed schools, so I had no idea how big the dance would be at my new school. I already bought an outfit two months in advance. It was hard to dress up for the dances because my school had uniforms.  Except for the Halloween dance which was a free dress day. Although they did let you bring a change of clothes to wear at the dance because the dress code was more relaxed after school.

The strange thing was nobody really noticed what I was wearing before. Even when I wore non school uniform clothes because I had a waiver. I got a lot of unwanted attention in that outfit. I didn’t think it would turn so many heads. Even the teachers wondered why I was so dressed up.

I thought the dances were boring because the music sucked and because I didn’t have anybody to hang out with at the dance. Dances were more for popular kids; the kind of people who can practically hang out with anybody. Usually there would just be like a large group of popular girls that consisted of about ten to twelve girls.

My school had a strange design. The buildings were round and there was a round space in the middle. The dances were held inside the round space. The teacher who ran the student government was one of the P.E. teachers; he also DJed the dances. I remember at the dance I went to he was on one side of the room at the ones and twos. There was some yellow caution tape a few feet in front of the turntables to prevent the students from going up there. The student government only had really old records. Not tapes or CDs, but vinyl. The records were mostly old breakdance music with a little bit of freestyle thrown in. Music that was popular around the time we were born. Like the kind of music that was featured in the show Graffiti Rock.

He was playing this style of music between 1996-1998. Some of the songs played were; “No Parking on the Dancefloor” by Midnight Star. ”Jam on it” by Newcleus and a song by World Class Wreckin’ Cru, but I forget which one. When I hear “Planet Rock” it makes me incredibly nostalgic. One of the most recent songs the school had was “The Bomb!” (These Sounds Fall into my Mind) by The Bucketheads. They didn’t have a lot of music so while I was at the dance the music seemed to be on a half hour loop like about every half hour it was the same old songs. The other teachers would tell us we were boring for being bored at the school dances.

The school was poorly designed even by Southern California standards. There was no shelter from the rain. There was no gym or indoor cafeteria. When it was really rainy and we couldn’t eat lunch outside or have P.E.  They would play games at lunch. It was sort of a “Name That Tune” type game. The teacher would play a snippet of a song, and nobody knew who it was by, so we would just look around at each other confused. It was a very boring and frustrating game. 

Looking back on it in late 1998-1999 breaking dancing had a resurgence in the area, so I guess if they still had that music there it might have come back in style. The P.E. teacher from the junior high came to the high school to teach us P.E. It was cool because we knew him from junior high; although he did not advise the student government at the high school.

At least they played English language songs at those dances. Not like the high school dances. I think I had more fun going home and watching Martha Stewart Living and Oprah.