In My Day, Sports Day Didn’t Have A DJ

We took a walk to the small mall this morning. The small mall is the one just a couple blocks from us. It can be very convenient: a Safeway, Starbucks and a Subway, a liquor store, a dollar store and a vegetable store. It can also be very strange: a custom bra fitter, a sewing-machine retailer, a paint store and the smallest food fair ever made, consisting of two (2) concessions. One sells all manner of fried and baked items (rice, eggs, shepherd’s pie, lasagna) and the other sells sushi. Every time I go to the small mall – and I go there a lot – I marvel that there are people eating this food, sitting at the tables and chairs that appear to have been scattered through the mall by an angry developer who had had enough! I’m never working on suburban strip malls again! back in 1977.

On our way to the small mall we passed the middle school, which was alive with shouting preteens. It is recess, I guess. I said to Trombone, Surely this must be the last week of school.
Uccccck, he replied.

The field was full of children collected in groups by coloured t-shirt. The reds were running and the blues were kicking. And under the school’s overhang, by the basketball nets, a small group of boys was standing around a folding table upon which sat a very excited stereo.

I recognized “Sweet Home Alabama” playing as we walked by. Just as I was thinking how quaint – the principal is playing his favourite music for sports day! the two girls who were walking around the school (do you remember doing this in school? We would just walk and walk and walk; arms linked, talking about candy and boys and who liked who and who didn’t like who and who LIKE liked who) fell in behind me and one of them sang, “Sweet Home Alabama,” and the other replied, “where the skies are so blue,” and then they fell about the place giggling and I walked a little faster because 12 year old girls in 2007 know the words to “Sweet Home Alabama?” Is there an episode of America’s Next Top Model I missed where the models all do ’70s karaoke?

By the time I reached the end of the block, where the field ends, I had also heard Chumbawamba and Radiohead. Well, I must not have seen the teacher who was controlling the stereo,I said to Trombone, because there is no way those kids are playing the greatest hits of my ’20s of their own free will and volition.
Uck, said Trombone, adding, GUCK UCK CUCK for emphasis.

30 minutes later we were walking home. I could see the group of boys still clustered around the table but I couldn’t make out the tune. They were dancing, though. They were flailing like Axl Rose crossed with Alanis Morrissette in her hand-flicking days (that’s a nod to my father-in-law who actually refers to Mme. Morrissette as “The hand-flicker.”) What the hell, I said to Trombone. It must be Limp Bisquick or whatever the kids are calling it. Blue October. That band that dresses like clowns. Trombone did not reply. He was too busy staring. As we drew closer I recognized the song. It was “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

“Here we are now – entertain us – I feel stupid – and contagious – here we are now – entertain us,” they hollered in perfect unison but without a hint of tune and then continued to mosh in the pit of their own making. Floppy hair, pants sliding down around their knees, bird-like hands pounding invisible drums.

Not a teacher in sight.