Bizarre at the Boathouse, Part 1

Audio version now available.

The boathouse in Wash Park has a long and storied history. I mean, it must, right? I’ve never looked into it, but it looks old, and it’s definitely the anchor of the park, the neighborhood, maybe the whole southeast side of Denver. It is the hub of the Independence Day bicycle parade, couples get married there, and it is an easy meeting spot for people walking together in the park.

But it doesn’t house any boats. Maybe they store the floating plastic paddle swans under it in the winter, but for all of its iconic grandeur, they ought to have an old Mississippi riverboat cemented into the lakeshore next to it.

A riverboat would make a nice backdrop for homecoming dance pictures for the high school adjacent to the south side of the park. We are in the midst of a universally acknowledged, social-media-exacerbated, mental-health epidemic, so the homecoming dance sounds like a great way to encourage our young people to spend face-to-face time together. And it is. I am pro hoco. But as I leaned on the boathouse Saturday night, trying to stay out of the way and not brush against any of the girls who seemed to have shopped for dance gowns in the lingerie department, it occurred to me that the predance picture ritual might not be helping.

We want to get techno-addicted teens away from their phones, so the first thing that happens on homecoming night is that we take about a hundred pictures of each of them looking their absolute fake-fancy best? And what happens to all the pictures?

I think this is where teenage boys and girls largely diverge. My boys have never asked my wife to text them all the predance pictures so they could post them. In fact, we were elated that this year, for the first time, our one remaining high schooler actually engaged in conversation with us at the boathouse.

Us. His parents. In front of all the other high schoolers. He talked to us, took a picture with us, and even walked to and from the boathouse with us. His older brother wouldn’t even walk to the park with us, insisting on a minimum of 50 feet of lag to our giddyup as we approached the park.

But based on the number of times I’ve winced and speed scrolled past sub 18 flesh since the predance picfest, I’m pretty sure girls are more likely to insist that their images of elegance make it to the internet. What a bizarre ritual. We started an evening of something kids desperately need more of–in-person contact with other kids–with the pinnacle of fakery. We took pics to be plastered to the global judgement forum for children with their developing prefrontal cortexes to use to make toxic self-comparisons. We humans do a lot of strange things. As I rested a shoulder on the boathouse, this one moved up my list of cultural norms worth a second thought.

I must admit to my love for watching teenage girls try to walk in those thin little heels. I don’t find myself in the woodlands witnessing the first steps of fawns very often, but I think the boathouse at hoco was probably a good representation. Between concentrating on their steps, and remembering to pull their strapless dresses up every two seconds, homecoming for girls seemed like human torture.

I also enjoyed the expressions of the parents as they weaved sheepishly through the crowd of kids–trying not to be inadvertent photo bombs, but also trying not to lose sight of their child who insisted that they kept their distance. It is kind of like if they let visitors into the cages with the monkeys at the zoo. Kids in sequins and adults in sweatpants is like playing Where’s Waldo with a population that’s 50% Waldos.

Fakery was also widespread among the parental species. Most were wearing grins as thin veils of concern. Would their little fawn find his or her footing, or would they be cornered and eaten by a pack of newly post-pubescent, woodlands-roaming hyenas? I coach soccer with a high school math teacher who always admonishes our teams to, “Make good decisions,” as we approach celebratory weekends. Her voice echoed in my head as I witnessed the hoco crowd. I am sure it was the silent prayer of most of the parents. The evening’s upcoming decisions were the underlying concern that betrayed the expressions of confidence that the parents did, in fact, do a good job raising their children.

Our son attended homecoming as a double date. The four teens came to our home for dinner after the boathouse and before the dance. Before we left the park, the mother of one of the girls coming home with us realized she forgot to buy gum for her daughter. She had let her daughter down, and it was clear that she was doing some all-too-familiar self-flaggelation. “We have gum. We’ll give her a pack,” I assured her. The mom’s relief seemed outsized for a pack of Doublemint. It was as if she’d been working on a puzzle for months, and she had finally found the missing piece under the coffee table. More relevant to the particular evening’s festivities, it was as if that pack of gum was going to keep the hyenas at bay.

We try so hard. We get distracted with our own lives and a world full of dysfunction. In the end, we just hope our efforts were good enough. We post pictures to prove that at least we can all clean up OK when necessary. We all have it in us to be fake, even if the ones in sweatpants are seasoned enough to know no one’s fooling anybody.

Then we offer somebody we barely know a pack of gum. It seems important. And we are reminded that someday, we’ll need a pack of gum, too. And as fucked up as humans generally are, we can usually be counted on to share a pack of gum in a pinch. And everything seems OK. Not the fake, hoco pic version of OK. But genuinely OK. At least for now.

I’m not sure of the historical significance of the Southeast Denver hub, but I’m glad it was there for me to lean on and ponder. Who knew I’d find a piece of the puzzle at the boathouse.

If you are done with the fakery, and also done with alcohol, consider joining us where we look for the puzzle pieces to this experience called humanity.

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