Elvis Has Left the Sock Hop

By Bob Wire, 4-07-08

	Caption: No, not that kind of sock hop...

“Hey, Patsy, this is Bob Wire. Listen, I’ve been thinking, and I’d like to volunteer to MC the Sock Hop this year, if you don’t already have someone.”

Looking back now, I must have been out of my frickin’ mind.

The Sock Hop at John Colter Elementary in Missoula is an annual rite of spring that is hotly anticipated by the kids, and loathed by parents with a dread they usually save for a colonoscopy sans anesthetic. The Sock Hop is put on as a fund-raiser for the PTA, and several area schools have one each year. It’s the tried-and-true 50’s theme: rockabilly music, poodle skirts, a cakewalk and a raffle. The MC dresses like Elvis and runs the games, cracks dopey jokes, and generally keeps things moving while the DJ plays dance music. My kids have been after me for years to MC this thing, and since Rusty is in the 5th grade, his last year at John Colter, I agreed to do it this year.

Big mistake.

As they say, no good deed goes unpunished, and this night proved that axiom in spades. I had spoken to the organizer exactly one time, in a brief phone call a week before the event, when I happened to be in Las Vegas dealing with a family matter. I told her I’d like to MC, and she promised to touch base with me when I returned to Missoula, and she’d fill me in on the details then.

I came home the Tuesday night before the Sock Hop, and the next morning I left a message with her. Left another message that afternoon. More phone calls in the evening, becoming increasingly frantic. Hundreds of kids were going to converge on the school in less than 48 hours, and I was getting no information.

I found out Thursday that Patsy had left town, leaving all the volunteers hanging. No one had any answers for me. I called one woman I knew was involved with the dance.

“Hey, Sara, this is Bob. Do you know which DJ Patsy hired? I need to coordinate with him.”

“Gee, I don’t know, Bob. I’m in charge of crepe paper. You should talk to Linda.”

I called Linda. “Hey, this is Bob. I’m going to MC the dance, but I need to talk to the DJ. Do you know who they hired?”

“Sorry, Bob, I’m in charge of the condiments. I don’t know anything about the DJ. Why don’t you talk to Teri?”

And so on. After talking to half a dozen volunteer moms, and putting last year’s organizers and the school principal on the case, I still couldn’t determine if Patsy had hired a DJ for the dance. By mid-afternoon Friday, I was beginning to seriously regret ever coming back from Las Vegas.

I was assured by the principal, who generally has a very good thumb on the pulse of the school, that Patsy MUST have hired a DJ, and everything would be fine. Right, I thought, and President Bush has the country’s best interests at heart. Fearing a worst-case scenario, I loaded my PA gear into the truck. But I had no idea how I was going to be able to play music AND make announcements AND run the games and contests.

I ironed my best camp shirt, squeezed my fat ass into a pair of clean 501’s, pulled on my two-tone creepers, and piled my hair into a fearsome pompadour. I clamped a pair of Elvis sunglasses to my face (they still bore the price tag from the Vegas airport gift shop) and Rusty and I drove down to the school. We pulled up at 5:40 and walked into the gym. There was a banquet table set up opposite the bleachers, and it was festooned with crepe paper. Sara had come through. But there was no DJ.

There wasn’t going to be a DJ. The dance was scheduled to start at 6:00.

Rusty and I sprung into action, bringing in the PA gear. I recruited a couple of parents who were trying to escape after dropping off their kids, and we got everything set up. I had spent a half hour that afternoon loading my iPod with Elvis, Chuck Berry, Robert Gordon, and a few self-indulgent selections, just in case. I plugged it in and dialed up “My Gal Is Red Hot” by Robert Gordon and Link Wray. It was 6:02.

The gym doors flew open, and a horde of poodle-skirted girls and white t-shirt wearing boys streamed into the gym. Some picked up hula hoops and began gyrating. Girls danced in knots of four and five, while boys chased each other around the gym, screaming at the top of their lungs. I turned up the music.

It looked like a Fellini movie as written by Potsie and Ralph Malph. Parents were huddled on the bleachers, grimly passing time until the raffle, when a Wii game system would be given away, and they could take their kids home. At 6:30 I grabbed my microphone and gave Rusty a throat-slashing motion, and he paused the music.

“Hey, kids, welcome to the Sock Hop! I’m your host, you can call me the King. I just played four rounds of golf in Las Vegas, and boy are my balls swollen!” Crickets. “Okay, then,” I soldiered on, “who’s ready for the limbo contest?” Massive shrieking. In the gym, it sounded like a pair of Pratt & Whitneys warming up on a jetliner. I got the kids to form a line, and had them start going under the limbo bar, while Rusty provided some Green Day and Red Hot Chili Peppers to spark the mood. Funny, I didn’t remember putting that stuff on the iPod…

As I was trying to moderate the limbo contest, kids were constantly tugging on my shirt, strafing me with questions. (“You’re not the regular guy. Where’s the regular guy?” “How come that guy is singing dirty words in this song?” “My sister just threw up in that box of wires.” “When’s the limbo contest gonna start?”) I felt like some kind of Lord of the Rings character who was trying to make his way through the Swamp of Curious Trolls, all the while being pulled down into the muck by little creatures dressed up like extras from Grease.

Rusty and I enlisted the help of one of his friends, Funky Joe, and we announced the Dance Contest. I blasted some Jerry Lee Lewis hits while the three of us circulated among the dancers, randomly handing out gum erasers, shiny new pencils, and Freemo’s Pizza dolls. (“Best Looking Couple! Here’s your prize!” “Craziest Jitterbug! Here’s your prize!” “Most Desperate For a Prize! Here’s your prize!”) When our box of trinkets was exhausted, I announced the end of the Dance Contest.

All the while there were bingo games and a cake walk and a hair slicking station and all manner of peripheral activities going on throughout rest of the school building. Small packs of hollering kids ran rampant through the halls, unrestrained by any kind of adult guidance. It was an absolute orgy of kid freedom, and most of the parents were huddled on the gym bleachers, hands over their ears, promising themselves they’d just cut a check to the PTA next year and take their kids to a movie instead. Not that their kids would allow that, but hey, whatever gets you through the night.

In the gym, it was time for the bubble blowing contest. With the help of a couple of kids, I handed out a single piece of Double Bubble to each kid, which took approximately nine hours. As the line slowly snaked through the gym, I felt like we were doling out government cheese to a bunch of out of work beboppers. Finally, we got to the contest. I quickly winnowed the mob down to about 20 finalists. I was just visually judging the size of the bubbles, as I lacked any measuring device like calipers or even a rudimentary holographic calibrator. One of Rusty’s friends, Otis, blew a suspiciously large bubble. I asked him to put his gum in his hand, and it was a wad the size of a tennis ball. “Extra gum. Otis, you’re out,” I told him, shaking my head in disappointment. “I want you to go tell your mom goodbye, because you are spending the next 48 hours in the Hole.” Eyes wide, he wandered off toward the bleachers.

The winner of the bubble blowing contest was an adult, who thankfully did not complain about her Freemo’s Pizza doll prize. I walked back to the PA, stepping over all the bubble gum land mines on the gym floor, and told Rusty it was time for the raffle. He cut the music and I made the announcement, which brought a tremendous roar from the acquisitive crowd. “Hey, who wants to win an iPod?” I said into the mic. A few shouts here, a smattering of applause there. “How about this brand new Giant mountain bike?” A bit more response, but when I said, “Who wants to win a Wii?” it brought the house down like I’d just announced that Hannah Montana was their new bff. I have rarely felt such power as when I wielded that microphone in front of a gym full of Wii-crazed kids.

The throng clutched their raffle ticket stubs in sweaty, hot dog fueled anticipation while we gave away the preliminary prizes. At last, it was time for the Wii. Rusty drew a ticket out of the box, and immediately checked the number against his own ticket.

He was off by one number. I could not have been more relieved. Can you imagine if he had won? The MC’s kid pulls his own number out of the box? Oh, I can see the headlines now: “Angry Mob of Yard Apes Stabs Ersatz Elvis With Shiny New Pencils.” The Wii went to one lucky kid who came up to the dais to collect his prize. He held it up over his head in triumph, while the crowd cheered, booed, and generally exhibited the kind of atavistic behavior that you usually see only a piñata busting.

“That’s it for tonight, kids!” I announced. “Thanks for coming to the Sock Hop. If you’re going to drink and drive tonight, please don’t smoke. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. And remember, fellas, she may look like a ten tonight, but don’t be surprised if you wake up next to a number one tomorrow! Thank you and good night!”

The crowd had grown sullen because most of them didn’t win a prize. They filtered out of the school while Rusty and I dismantled the PA and loaded it into the truck. I was shell-shocked and hoarse, and all the shrieking had left a sound in my ears like sizzling bacon. We got home and walked inside. “So how was the Sock Hop, boys?” said Barb, who had the good fortune of staying home.

I ignored her and walked to the freezer, where I pulled out a chilled martini glass. Rusty, jacked up on Dr. Pepper and gummy bears, regaled his mom with tales of the dance, including Otis’s ouster from the bubble blowing contest. I pulled a bottle of Plymouth gin down from the liquor cabinet and fixed a very large, very dry martini fit for the King. I threaded a couple of jumbo olives onto a toothpick and brought my drink into the living room, plopped down on the couch, and sat there with a thousand-yard stare on my face.

“Oh, honey, you look worn out,” said Barb. “Why don’t you take off your shoes and I’ll give you a foot rub.”

I took a large sip of the martini. “Thank you,” I said, curling my upper lip. “Thank you very much.”

[Bookmark NewWest.net/BobWire today, and check back frequently for more shocking reports from the trenches. That is all.]

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