WHAT’S SO FUNNY:A new homecoming tradition

Last weekend was homecoming at the high school — the last time around for Patti Jo and me, because our daughter Katie is a senior, and we don’t have anybody coming along after her except our pets.

There was a carnival in the quad before the football game, and several of the school clubs ran booths — well, tables, actually — to raise money for themselves. Katie and her friends Jane and Crystal handled the booth for anime club, offering miso soup and rice.

Elsewhere, there was popcorn, cotton candy, a face-painting booth and a booth where you could throw a volleyball through a hole (or maybe you couldn’t). The chess club members, surprisingly rugged as so many chess players are, took pies in the face. The cheerleaders did a cheer, and the band drum line performed. There was a cakewalk and a limbo contest.

There was also a pie-eating contest, after which Patti Jo heard a girl say, “Did you see that? That was SO disgusting!” — a remark echoed by one of the participants. Fun to watch, though, and it didn’t really seem excessive.

The contestants only ate a pie apiece, and they were all young and skinny enough to look like they could use a pie.

The carnival was the idea of the new principal, Dr. Donald Austin, and it was an enjoyable, uncomplicated, old-fashioned, informal 90-minute get-together — nothing MTV would have been interested in, which was all to the good. It deserves to become an annual Homecoming tradition.

Senior Nathan Pickett, acting as roving emcee announcing the events, struck just the right note of casual good nature. The popcorn was tasty, as was the miso soup. I didn’t try the cotton candy. I don’t know why; it’s not like me to skip it.

At an event such as this, the parents of seniors walk around in a daze, looking at the students they haven’t seen in a while.

They remember these kids galloping around at Top of the World School. It all seems to have happened pretty fast.

My favorite moment occurred during the limbo contest, which featured smaller children mixed in with high-schoolers.

The shortest contestant, a tiny girl with long dark hair, followed the others at the beginning, when the bar was about 5 feet high.

The tall kids bent backwards to make it under the bar, and the smaller ones just walked erect underneath it.

When the littlest girl went under the bar 3 feet above her, she bent backwards. She wasn’t taking any chances.

You don’t get much cuter than that, and whoever her parents are, I hope they got a strong mental snapshot of the moment, because that little sweetie is going to be a high school senior in about 20 minutes and they’re going to be at the carnival feeling like the express just went by.