I’m a morning person. I’d much rather be up at 6am than stay up past 9:30. I know. I’m an old lady. I’m good with that!

Being room mom (yay me) for Henry’s class, I was invited to the PEP RALLY (use jazz hands, please) to kick off their big fundraiser, the Boosterthon. If y’all have never been to a Boosterthon, well, you’re missing out. I was so excited to be going to a PEP RALLY! Only… it was at 8:15. AM. Yes, AM.

Naturally, by virtue of being me, I was all, “this will be great.” And it was. But boy howdy was it LOUD!

The guys who put on Boosterthon are amazing. They dance around, they say funny stuff, they are basically paid to be total and complete goofballs. What a sweet gig! But it involves hundreds of screaming kids. But what a sweet gig!

Anyway, as I was standing in the gym full of half-asleep parents and screaming elementary kids, I was taken back to days of Friday afternoon PEP RALLIES at my high school.

In high school, I was a Vespidaette. A what? A Vespidaette. We were the Hornets. Our yearbook was The Vespidae. That is the Family of the Hornet in scientific language. So we, the dancers were the Vespidaettes. Makes sense, right?

Anyway, we wore lycra and sequins and danced our hearts out. We had rules that we followed and camps we attended. We could kick high and do splits (why do people say “the splits” I wonder…). We were, if I may say so myself, amazing.

Being a Vespidaette gave me a chance to do some pretty amazing things. At summer camps I won a myriad of awards, as did my teammates. I was chosen to dance in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade not once, but twice. I danced in two Cotton Bowl halftime shows. My whole family went to Ireland so I could dance in front of the Lord Mayor and in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin.

In fact, if I said my whole high school career was wrapped around being a Vespidaette and being Captain and all that, it would be 110% accurate.