The eight grade fall dance was coming.  I knew we had to act fast!

“Stephanie, do you want to host a sleepover the night of the dance?”

“Yea Dad!”

“We’d better get an email out quickly before some other parent decides they want to have twelve thirteen-year-olds over for 20 hours.  We don’t want to miss this opportunity.”

I actually don’t mind hosting.  I’m up late most nights anyway and… if you sit quietly and listen, you garner so much information in a really short period of time.  Which is good for a clueless father.

It took me, my afternoon sitter and another mom to get the dozen, and their stuff, to the house after school on Friday.  The excitement was palpable.

As the girls ate dinner, I was affirmed when one girl chirped up out of the blue, “I’m mean, like, abs are nice but some guys just take it too far.  I don’t like it when those muscles are all stickin’ out and stuff.”

How refreshing to hear.  I hope that 48-year-old women feel the same way.

One mom who ran by the house to drop her kid’s outfit off said, “You’re a brave man Danny Tanner.”

“I’m not afraid of no eigth grade girls.  I ran a Y day camp for five years.  They got nothin’ on me.”  And they don’t.  I can dish out as much as they can, maybe more.

As we neared the school for the drop off, two SUVs packed with adolescents, panic ensued in both cars.

“It’s only 7:02!  We can’t get there yet!  We have to be fashionably late.”

I had just pulled into the driveway of the school when I got the word.  “Stop!”  We pulled over, a good football field from the drop off point.  The windows flew open, One Direction’s The Best Song Ever cranking from my Dolby speakers, turned up to max decibels.  Bodies were hanging out of the windows, one or two popped out of the sunroof.  Of course, I couldn’t let a beat like that pass by – I too jumped out of the car and got my groove on, a couple of other parents passing us by in wonder – or disbelief.

When we picked the crew up, and the car doors closed, I think the dance was summed up by one of the wisest of the crew, “Boys are jerks!”  It was then qualified with, “You’re a man Mr. Tanner, you don’t count.”

“Yeah.  It’s always more fun getting ready than actually going,” Stephanie pitched in.

“I asked Bobby why he didn’t ask anyone to dance.  He said it would mess up his mojo.  I told him, ‘You’re at a small, private school.  Any mojo you had went out the door when you made the decision to attend this institution.'”

As the girls got into their PJ’s, one asked, “Mr. Tanner, do you have a wash cloth so I can get all of this makeup off?”

“Yea.  I have a paint scraper and a chisel too if you need it.”

About 10 PM I pulled Stephanie into my bedroom.  “At 1:30, the girls need to be quiet.  If they’re not, I’m coming out of my room in my underwear and yelling, and you don’t want that do you?”

“Ah, no.”

“Great!”

About 1 AM, it was like the night before Christmas – not a creature was stirring, not even Kimmey Gibler.

Oh, my car still smells like cotton candy.