It is official. I have now seen the most awkward thing that COVID-19 can offer.
I mentioned that the girls are both doing the competitive cheer thing this year, albeit in a very altered form. They had their state competition a few weeks ago, an event that was handled via video recording so as to prevent multiple teams from being inside the building at the same time. It was all very well-organized and the people in charge did a great job of mitigating risk.
The risk mitigation continued to the awards portion of the event. Instead of shoving a bunch of teams into one room and throwing a big party, it was handled via Zoom. Which, good idea.
I'm not sure what I expected, exactly, but I guess competitive cheer people don't know how to leave the hype out of any event. They hyped a PowerPoint presentation, y'all. There was dance music and lots of confetti and ... y'all. Y'ALL.
(Yes, I'm sourthern now. Ignore the part where I grew up in North Dakota.)
At the start of every cheer awards thing, there's a dance party. They loudly blare the usual music and a few hundred cheerleaders cram onto the floor and prove that their parents have paid a lot of money for cheer only to end up with terribly uncoordinated fools. They're having fun, sure, but they always look hilarious doing it. Obviously, they couldn't all cram into one space via Zoom, so they did the dance party virtually.
Now, Alexis and I were in the car for the festivities, so we boldly ignored the presenters pleas for us to join in. I'm sure Mila joined in as she watched from home. It doesn't matter, though, because it was a Zoom webinar, so all anyone could see was the presenter. Who was in her living room. Wearing a sweatshirt. And dancing awkwardly and "Wooooo!" and she BROUGHT THE HYPE TRAIN, Y'ALL. That one woman alone managed just as much hype as hundreds of pint-sized cheerleaders. She couldn't see any of the other people in the meeting and the music was clearly was coming from her phone sitting next to her and there was a PowerPoint slide and OMG.
OMG.
It was so awkward. And I loved it. I loved every single second of the awkwardness because I wasn't crammed into an auditorium with hundreds of cheer moms. Let's keep awkward Zoom cheer award ceremonies, please. They are THE BEST.
(Both girls' teams placed 1st. Go figure.)