I saw you dancing in the gym, you both kicked off your shoes. And your undies, apparently.

I walked in the door after work last night at about 5:55 p.m.  J, who picks the kids up from school every day, was there with them waiting for me to get home.  He left, and I greeted them with hugs and kisses, anticipating a pleasant evening of dinner and bath and maybe some basketball-watching.

Just as I put my backpack down, Zeke said, "I want to go to the dance at school."

I mentally scrolled through the emails I had recently received about school activities, but couldn't come up with anything about a dance.

"What dance?" I asked.

"There's a dance at school," he replied.

"Tonight?  I haven't heard anything about a school dance."

We went back and forth like this, with me asking if he was sure it was tonight, and him insisting that it was.

"And you really want to go?"

"Yes," he said.

"What time is the dance?"

"6 to 8."

It was exactly 6:00 p.m.

"Josie, do you want to go to the dance?"

She was snuggled up on the couch under a blanket, watching a cartoon, but she nodded.

"OK," I shrugged.  "Get your shoes on.  Let's go."

"But we need costumes!"  They both exclaimed.

"What are you talking about??" I was getting seriously irritated at this point.

"It's a costume dance.  You need to get costumes for us!"

"I'm not getting anything," I said.  "I had no idea that there was a dance or that costumes were involved.  If you want costumes, go find them yourself."

So Josie went and put on her princess dress.  Zeke was looking for his Ninja Turtle costume from Halloween, but couldn't find it.

"What about if you put on one of your football jerseys and I'll put some eye black under your eyes?"

That was acceptable to him, so I smudged some mascara under his eyes and off we went.

Because I hadn't heard anything about it (and I went through my emails and found nothing from the school mentioning it), I figured that it would be sparsely populated and that we could hang out for a little while and then go home.  But when we got there, the place was packed with pretty much all the kids from all the grades, plus their parents.  There was a DJ.  There was pizza and soda and glow sticks.

It was kind of like a high school dance, only the participants were much shorter and less likely to be caught smoking weed on the playground.

There were favorite songs - everybody bopped around and sang along to such classics as Katy Perry's "Roar" and "Firework," Taylor Swift's "Trouble" song, "Gangnam Style," and of course, "Let It Go."  When Let It Go came on, every kid went into full-on Beatlemania hysteria mode and started screaming.  It was both alarming and hilarious.

Zeke danced the entire time.  The few times I tried to venture out to dance with him, I was met with an unequivocal "talk to the hand" gesture, so I skulked back to the wall where the other loser parents were hanging out.

Zeke shows off his moves.

Josie (in the purple dress) in a kiddie conga line.

Josie danced for a minute but then went outside to play on the playground.  When she came back inside, I crouched down to give her a hug and wrapped my arm around her and patted her on the butt.

"Um, Josie, when you went to put on your princess dress, did you take off your underwear?"

"Yeah."

"And you didn't put them back on?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I dunno."  She shrugged.

"Honey, when you wear a princess dress to school, and particularly if you're swinging around on the playground, you can't go commando."

She rolled her eyes and giggled and ran off to find her friends.

I'm going to have to watch out for that girl.  She's trouble (trouble, trouble)...