Giddy

Problem #1 - Rose Dance

On March 20th, I turned sixteen.

Now, I didn't want to have a party or do anything for it. The time I wanted to have a huge, extravagant party was on my eighteenth birthday.

That didn't happen.

I came home to a surprise party for my Sweet Sixteen. Exciting, right? Except for the fact that I knew a few days in advance.

See, my mom was sending out invitations to people via text message. I carpool to church in the morning before school for Seminary, and one morning as we waited outside the apartment building of one of the members of this carpool, he was running a bit late. This has occurred multiple times. I decided to check my mom's text messages to see if he'd sent her a message about how he wouldn't be going because he was sick or something. That's when the message illuminated on the screen and I read it.

Surprise ruined.

But not entirely. There were more people there than I had anticipated, and my mom actually got a DJ. I was impressed, and if I had not found out ahead of time, I swear I would have been crying.

Fast forward into the night, the DJ announced that we would be starting the Rose Dance.

Rose Dance? That's what went through all of our heads. It's a dance in which you have the same amount of roses as the age of the birthday girl. Each boy or man would receive a rose, I'll compare it to a ticket for a carnival ride, as a sort of ticket that they would give to me as sort of permission to dance with me. Each person would get about a minute or so to just slow dance with me. It was interesting.

Of course, it was embarrassing for a while. It's a sort of customary thing that all of my friends weren't familiar with. My mom did invite some of her friends that have become sort of like uncles and aunts to me, and most of them knew what it was. Obviously, the DJ knew as well.

My most memorable dances really made me smile. Not that I wasn't smiling the whole time or anything.

One of my friends who came up to hand me his rose knelt down on one knee and handed it to me. You have no idea how hot my face felt when he did that to me. Unfortunately, conversation lacked with him, but it was because I wasn't doing so great a job of containing my giggling.

It was caught on video, by the way.

Next was a dance with one of our long time employees. My parents have two houses in which we take care of the elderly and this guy has been working with us since practically the beginning. He was pretty young when he started with us. As I grew older, I looked to him as a sort of older brother. He did everything that qualified for one: he teased me. That wasn't the only thing he did though. He drove me around when he finally got his license here (he has a driver's license in the Philippines where he's from), he suggested shows to me, he was always on top of watching movies when they came out and so he told me whether or not they were good or bad, and I was convinced that if I was in trouble that he would come help me.

He was definitely awkward when he first came up and we started dancing. He pulled me towards different directions, and the only thing I thought he was planning to do was throw me in the air. He used to throw my sisters and I into the pool in a similar way he was swinging me around, that's what made me think of that.

He gave me almost a challenging look as he said, "I'm going to throw you?"

My feet left the ground and I was raised up high into the air. I tucked my knees in when I went up until my feet touched the ground again.

Then there came the dance with my grandfather. He's a fat little man who doesn't speak English. All he does when he sees me is give me a hug and then laugh, a huge smile on his face that creased all the wrinkles on his face and made his eyes disappear. He didn't dance for too long with me because he couldn't stay on his feet for a large amount of time.

Lastly, there's the dance with my father. I totally thought he was going to cry when he came up to me, but he was fine. It was me that had to hold back tears. We just talked and danced. The only chance we get to talk with each other really is when he comes to pick me up from school and other places; we're always in a vehicle, him driving and I in the passenger seat beside him. This was a touching change of pace, and I had to keep talking to distract myself from thinking of things that would make me cry.

Then the night came to an end.

Back to school, dead from the weekend, I ask around for a video of the rose dance of my friends who were there. The first person I asked said she only got a video of one dance and that was the one of me and this boy who I'll call Parker.

Days and days later, I find out that people seemed to think that Parker likes me.

Another friend said the two of us were the cutest when we danced together.

He's problem number 1 of...

A lot.