I have terrible news: My children are growing up.
One of them is, anyway. I can’t be sure about the others. Four is too many to keep track of at once. But Betsy is definitely getting older for some reason. This weekend, she had her first dance. Not a family dance or daddy-daughter dance, but an actual proper school dance where boys and girls stare at each other awkwardly from opposite sides of the gym with no parents in sight. The only enforcers of decorum were a handful of teacher chaperones, who of course were armed with cattle prods, as tradition demands. At least that’s what Betsy said. That part better have been true or I never would have let her go.
Somehow, I continue to be caught off guard that my children are aging at a rate of one year every 365 days. It’s entirely too fast. Just yesterday, Betsy was a kindergartner on her first day of school, and the day before that, she was a newborn. I’m not old enough to have an eleven-year-old in sixth grade who goes to school dances. Worse, in a few weeks I’ll have a twelve year old who’s in seventh grade, which quite frankly seems like science fiction. My book about killer robots and elephant diarrhea was way more realistic.
As much as I don’t want to believe it, the signs are undeniable that Betsy isn’t a little kid anymore. When I catch her out of the corner of my eye, I constantly mistake her for my wife Lola. They’re about the same size and have roughly the same hair and face. In fact, Betsy might be Lola’s clone. Lola assures me that Betsy has my DNA, too, but that’s just to make me feel better. Betsy has already started raiding Lola’s closet for essentials, of which I fully approve. It just means our chain of hand-me-downs has been extended by one more person. If Betsy gets to the point where she’s sharing my clothes, though, I’ll officially be alarmed. I just don’t think this family has the genes for any 6’2” women. But if Betsy does, I’ll gladly support her career on the next reboot of American Gladiators. I hope she picks a cool name like Bone Crusher or Darth Vaderette.
Exploding Unicorn is a reader supported publication. Help keep the chaos going for another week.
The dance Saturday was a big event for Betsy, but then again, so are all events at this stage of her life. Her world is full of exciting firsts. It’s the opposite for me. All of my good milestones are in the rear view mirror. Now, my firsts are more like “first time a joint made that particular popping sound” or “first time I hurt my back from sneezing.” My monthly “this is not a bill” letters from my health insurance are just a catalog of all the ways I’m broken and gross. Regardless, it’s fun to watch someone else who is still young enough to look forward to things. Betsy has been talking about the dance for weeks, and now that it’s over, I’m sure she’ll be reliving it for months to come. I’m glad she’s growing up in the era of cell phones. Otherwise, she would have tied up the landline for days recapping the night with her friends and I’d never be able to dial into AOL.
The dance was only two hours long, but Betsy found a way to turn it into an all-night affair. Her best friend invited her to a sleepover afterward. If Betsy were a little older, this would be step one of the classic con where she tells me she’s going to her friend’s house and her friend tells her mom she’s coming to our house, but really both kids just sneak off into the woods to perform witchcraft. Full disclosure, I have no idea what teenagers do for fun these days. But Betsy is merely eleven, so I can only assume all post-dance activities were both above board and exactly as described. If I discover she actually summoned any demons this weekend, she’s totally grounded.
Getting ready for the dance was an ordeal unto itself. Guys have it much easier. When I was Betsy’s age, all I had to do was learn how to tie a tie, and even that was too much for me. I had my dad tie it for me once and then used the same knot for years at a time. I didn’t learn to tie it myself until college, and even then, I soon forgot. As recently as last year, I had to have an actual adult tie my tie before a friend’s wedding because I wasn’t capable of doing it myself. In my defense, I don’t exactly have to dress up when writing at home by myself. The last person worth impressing is me. Betsy, though, had to do her hair and nails and pick out the perfect dress. Most guys that age don’t do anything with their nails, including clip them, and they may or may not brush their hair. The best move is to keep it so short that you don’t even need to comb it. You can save hundreds of hours over a lifetime that way, which is time you can put toward other productive pursuits, like manspreading and not grooming yourself. As for outfits, girls have to pick from a million different dress options, while guys are limited to roughly two types of pants and three kinds of shirts. If you’re a dude, you could pick any combination of those in the dark and still be appropriately dressed for any dance in less than two minutes. Assuming your dad tied your tie for you in advance.
Recently, a friend who’s a bit older than me told me about the ordeal of getting his daughter ready for prom. After paying for her dress, hair, and nails, he ended up spending seven hundred dollars. I did the math for how much that would cost me if multiplied by four daughters (I used a calculator, obviously) and immediately began having nightmares. A few days later, I started offering paid Substack subscriptions. I’m sure that was just a coincidence. Thankfully, Betsy is still too young to fall victim to the prom industrial complex. For this dance, she just picked an old dress out of her closet. It was actually the same one she wore a few years ago to my brother Harry’s wedding, where we unveiled the bear. This is one area where girls have guys beaten. A dude in that age range wouldn’t be able to re-wear pants from two years ago because they would be, at best, capris. Growth spurts are the bane of family budgets everywhere. But a girl’s growth doesn’t necessarily stop a formal outfit from being reused. A long dress becomes a mid-length dress and ultimately a short dress. Maybe dresses for guys should be a thing.
There were other dance guidelines Betsy had to deal with. The dress code called for “Sunday dresses,” which confused my daughter since no one in my family gets dressed up for church. I don’t know if God is okay with casual attire, but it’s the best he’s going to get if he expects us to be there before noon on a weekend. There were also some complicated rules about shoulder straps that I didn’t fully understand, but Betsy seemed to have a handle on it. She didn’t get kicked out of the dance, anyway, which I can only assume means she followed the rules or deliberately broke them while avoiding detection. Both are equally valuable life skills.
For her hair, Betsy requested curls. That was a first. Lola almost never curls her hair, which in no way surprised me because I look at her hair every day and immediately notice any changes. Fun fact: It’s super easy to lie in an email. Despite being somewhat unfamiliar with it, Lola cleared everyone out of one of the bathrooms to begin the curling process, whatever that entails. I assume this is where the before-mentioned witchcraft came into play. When she was done, Betsy’s hair looked like before, but wavier. Mission accomplished. Afterwards, Lola said she thought I would be good at curling hair, but I’m not quite dumb enough to take on a new chore in exchange for a single unearned compliment. I’ve gotten pretty good at braiding hair, but so far I haven’t attempted anything that requires curlers, a hair dryer, or anything else that plugs in. Lola has seen how I am with power tools. I’m the last person who should be let near our daughters’ hair on dance days—unless Lola wants them all to be bald.
At the last minute, Lola offered to do Betsy’s makeup, but Betsy declined. She was out of time. There was no question of being fashionably late for the dance. She wanted to get there right when the doors opened at 6 p.m. I worked out the logistics in advance. I drove Betsy to her friend’s house to drop off Betsy’s sleepover gear and then took both girls to the school. The friend’s mom agreed to pick them up afterward and take them to her house for the sleepover. I was glad I didn’t have to worry about getting them at the end of the dance because I had planned a wild Saturday night of going to bed early. Sorry if I can’t keep my eyes open past 9 p.m. anymore. I’m not a bat.
Drop off wasn’t quite as easy as I anticipated. When I pulled up, there was a line of more than a hundred cars stretching blocks from the middle school. That’s what happens when you invite 800 kids to the gym at once. Betsy and her friend were adamant about not being late, so they got out and walked. As an added bonus, they wouldn’t have to be seen with me right in front of the school. They had this early escape planned all along.
That was the end of my role in the process. The next morning, I picked up Betsy from her sleepover. There were no visible signs that she’d participated in any woodland seances, so I can only assume the night went down as she described. She said she had a great time and can’t wait for the next one. That will be sometime next school year, so she has a bit of a wait. Hopefully by then, her current dress will still fit. With luck, she can also wear it to prom and, someday, her wedding. For that to work, though, she’ll have to stop growing soon. Here’s hoping she turns out to be a miniature human like her mom.
In the meantime, Betsy’s life won’t be without dancing. We have a wedding reception in St. Louis in a few weeks. The official wedding happened at the height of the pandemic when attendance was limited, but the open bar portion of the evening was delayed by a full two years. We now have a moral obligation to party hard enough to make up for lost time. Not really. I’ll have to drive my entire family back to the AirBnb afterwards, so it will probably be yet another one of the epically mild evenings I’m known for. Good luck getting an Uber that will accommodate six people, including two car seats. We’d basically have to flag down a bus. The kids, meanwhile, will dance their hearts out despite being completely sober, which is a phenomenon I’ll never understand. The girls absolutely love wedding receptions. If past performance is any indicator of future results, they’ll all still be on the dance floor when the bride and groom shut the place down. It won’t be as fun for Betsy as a middle school dance, though, because her parents and siblings will all be there. Family ruins everything.
***
A huge thanks to everyone who joined me for my move to Substack last week. I received a truly humbling level of support, which isn’t saying a lot because it doesn’t take much to humble me. The fact that even one person believes in me is still enough to make me blink back tears. Free subscribers will continue to get the weekly Monday morning newsletter that you know and love. Paid subscriptions, though, are where the magic happens. (Legal disclaimer: This is strictly metaphorical magic. I have no intention of becoming the next David Blaine.) For $5 a month or $50 a year, you can support the creation of all the free and exclusive content I put out. Paid subscribers get access to the full archives of every newsletter I’ve ever written, a bonus newsletter on Thursdays, and weekly exclusive webcomics, video and audio posts, and discussion threads. I left all of the posts from last week free to all to give you a preview of what you can look forward to as a supporter. Feel free to ignore your responsibilities for another hour to go back and read it all. If necessary, create a distraction for your boss. Trash can fires are a good start. (Additional legal disclaimer: The trash can fires should also be metaphorical. Unless, you know, there’s lighter fluid within easy reach.)
Or, to support me for exactly zero dollars, share this article with a friend. That really helps me out.
I can’t wait to show you all the new content I have planned for the weeks and months ahead. Catch you next time.
James
The Biggest Night of Her Life