On Being Homecoming Queen and One of the Dixie Chicks

I’m very distracted this week because I’m getting ready for another biggo party as only I can throw.  We’ll have a bonfire, a weenie roast,  S’Mores around the coals,  music, prizes and probably a few surprises as old friends catch up with each other.  We’re having us a Homecoming for all the graduates of Morgan’s Mercy Mansion. 

If you don’t know about the Mansion I have to ask “Where have you been?”  And “Welcome to my blog.”  You might consider checking out a few of my blogs that explain the Mansion.You can go to September 5, 2012 for the best one.

And since the whole Homecoming theme idea came to me a couple of football games ago I have named myself as the Homecoming Queen.

There are a lot of perfectly good ways to acquire a lofty title like this one or become someone popular.  A few of these ways are even legal. Like the time I was a Dixie Chick.

Obviously this happened a few years ago.  Since that whole “I’m ashamed George Bush is from Texas” confession the Chicks have lived very quietly and close to the ground. Come of it think of it, so has George Bush.  Maybe he’s as embarrassed by their political acumen as they are about their bad manners.

A few of my friends decided to go to a Dixie Chicks concert in Dallas.  We immediately organized ourselves and divided up the responsibilities. Lori was going to drive.  Nancy got the tickets through a friend of a friend.  I arranged some food for a little tailgate party there on the parking lot. And Janet brought some wine for the drinkers among us.

Somewhere in the week Lori got swamped at work.  She was building a website development company that would soon take off like gangbusters and make her a very wealthy woman.  The day of the concert she was feeling very tired but also very rich.  So she called in a limo to take us all to the concert. And we ended up with Carlos and his limo. 

He was driving a long black stretch limo with darkened windows, not the wimpy kind they use as funerals. It had a bar with crystal wine glasses. Janet uncorked the champagne and we popped in the latest Dixie Chicks CD;  then sat in total luxury while Carlos, our newest best friend, worried about traffic and parking. When we got to the concert Carlos set up our table with our red and white checked tablecloth and began acting as our personal maitre’d. I guess there’s not much for a driver to do once he’s finished driving. Hanging around us must have beat sitting in a hot car by himself. Then we serenely walked into the concert and left Carlos to clean up.

The concert was another thing altogether.  I think the last concert I had been to was the Supremes.  Even before Diana Ross took top billing.  And we know how long ago that was.  Things had changed.

We could see right off the bat that we were a good 30 or 40 years older than most of the audience. They were mostly teenaged girls, some with their families and some alone. They were all dressed pretty much alike in spaghetti strapped little things that barely covered their backs or their little bottoms. 

It turned out that Nancy’s friend of the friend who got her the tickets wasn’t that great of a friend because our seats were in the nosebleed section. Just getting to our seats was an aerobic exercise. This turned out to be not such a bad thing; the concert was for their “Fly” album and there was a huge helium fake fly buzzing around the ceiling of the gigantic Reunion Arena. We had a better view of the fly than most people. I think the fly’s main function was to dispense t-shirts and assorted gimmees to warm up the crowd. I realize having a huge fly buzzing around you at a concert throwing things at you may not sound very classy but, trust me, it was cool.

We also had a great view of the audience. There were five girls in front of us who had no visible family but somehow kept bringing back beer from the concession stand. At first I assumed they were of age but as it gradually sank in I turned to Nancy for an estimate of their age and she confirmed what I thought: "17, tops." At least these girls had shirts with backs to them. They must have put their money in the bodice of these almost nonexistent dresses because they kept digging around inside and patting their tiny chests. After their third beer I wanted to call their mothers and rat on them. But by that time we had also made friends with them. They would turn around to see Lori and Nancy dancing as wildly as they were and they would all high-five each other in sister-like glee. I half-expected Lori to offer to buy them a beer. 

For some reason there were five girls but only three seats. Fortunately for them there were very few times in the night anybody sat down, but they managed to do it when they needed to. And they kept pulling out their cell phones to call people. Given the noise level inside the arena, this was a real curiosity. There's absolutely no way they could have completed a call nor heard a sound through the phone. It was a great mystery to me.

It was a top notch concert and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Knowing we had our own private driver waiting to drive us home, we weren't in a big hurry after the concert. So we let the crowd die out before we left. But we had a hard time locating Carlos, who wasn't where he said he would be. Moderate grumbling was made all around and once we connected, we ended up being just about the last car to leave. However, Carlos managed to weave his way through the traffic and we found ourselves passing other cars on the road around the arena. 

And that’s when the fun started.

As we slowly negotiated our way through the traffic we noticed that people were waving at our car. Carloads of teenage girls were leaning out of their cars shouting and waving at us, hanging out the window on their tiny bare stomachs. They were shouting and waving with an almost hysterical delight. I'm thinking "Haven't these people seen a limo before?" But they kept up. It felt sort of like being in a parade as every car of teenagers waved hysterically at us with glee. Finally it hit us:  these people thought WE were the Dixie Chicks inside this stretch limo with its blackened windows driving away long after the concert was over.

NOW we're talking about an ego rush. There’s no other word. A real Ego Rush. I'm positive that's who they thought we were. We finally talked Lori, the only blonde among us, into raising her blonde little head just a few inches out of the sun roof and wave an arm just to give them a thrill.

Or maybe it was to give us one, I'm not sure which. It was even better than being the Homecoming Queen.