emo sightings!

on sunday my aunt was over for dinner. she and my mom and i were sitting outside on the patio when she blurts out, "i saw two emos walking down my street! i'd never seen these boys before. they had on these skin-tight girl jeans, and their hair was styled the same way." what you must know about my aunt: she works with my mom at the B-town high school. they are "paraprofessionals." in their capacity, security people/drug and alcohol sniffers/etc. everybody likes my mom because she's cool, she actually talks to the kids in stead of being just a semi-police officer. so naturally there is always discussion among them about the different social characterizations of the kids (typical ones are usually the jocks, the cheerleaders, the punks, the freaks, etc, etc.) so recently the term "emo" has made it to her vocabulary. according to my aunt, it is another of those social characterizations with its own set of hairstyles and clothing. wether this is true, i don't know, i'd have to be back in high school (side note: i've also heard the term "hipsters" and always ask my friend K are there any hipsters here? POINT! because he's the one who introduced the term to me.)

anyway back to my aunt's "emo sighting." my little brother, who is in high school and wears my old jeans, comes to the table. i think my mom says something like, oh are emos a gang now? do they have a sign? (at this point we're kind of making fun of my aunt) and then my brother, who is hillarious by the way, says YEAH! and then shows us by drawing his index finger from the corner of his eye down his cheek (as a tear would fall) and frowning.

and my mom likens my aunt's "emo sighting" to our own sightings of peacocks in our yard (yes, there is a whole flock of them running around the neighborhood, i think they belong to the romanians.) because the way she's said it, if you didn't know better you might think she meant to say emu or thought emo was some kind of wild animal. my aunt's funny in that sense: she thinks she knows what she's talking about but a lot of times doesn't.

that got as big a laugh out of my mom as i did when i told her about my brother and i bungee-cording two of the dogs and throwing frisbees. but that's another story for later.