The Princesses were recently invited to a Mardi Gras ball; it was their first. It was for young people and required a dress code, no alcohol and police on the scene. I was flattered that our Princesses asked the Admiral and me to attend. They would have gone without us, but it was nice to be invited.

We parents are no strangers to formal events, so wanted the evening to be special. Weeks were spent finding the right full-length gowns that the invitation required. Many shops were visited, white tie and tails acquired, alterations made, and we were ready to go.

It was a joy to escort my three lovely ladies to dinner. Many pictures were taken to memorialize the evening, which was going very well … until we arrived.

The word “ball” represents to me an event that holds certain expectations. I will not catalog in detail the disappointments of the evening. Suffice it to say that the dress code (my shirttails would have covered more than some of the dresses), the facility, the fare, the behavior of the youth and adult members of this organization (one young, male member of the court was allowed to remain on stage with a pair of panties on his head), the music which was blaring hip-hop put on non-stop by a DJ, and the dancing, all disappointed. Our girls and their friends did not.

They danced away from the crowd by themselves with nothing more suggestive than that they were having a good time. They smiled and sweated, and danced to the point that I did too. They were happy and soon joined by other like-minded teens. When an adult organizer encouraged them to participate in a circle dance, they obliged until the dancers in the center began to exhibit lewd behavior. Our girls smilingly extracted themselves from the throng to dance among themselves. Again, others followed.

In the course of the evening, one man asked me, “How did you come to have such good girls?”

I took the opportunity to refer him to my book, The Common Guy’s Guide to Raising Children, and summarized it for him. “First you gotta’ love ‘em. That’s chapter one. Second, you and your spouse have to have a set of standards to live by, and to raise your children by, that are inviolate. Third, you have to have a discipline system to match. Fourth and you seem to have mastered this one,” I said as I looked at his sweating, uncomfortable face, knowing he would rather be somewhere else, “it’s related to the first, you have to spend time with them.” This last carried considerable weight because out of the two hundred young people there, only we five parents of four girls were present. I closed saying, “You’re doing a good job.”

He gestured to the crowd grinding together that passed for dancing and asked, “What about them?” He was judging as I had been.

It was an enlightening moment for both as I asked, “Who’s to say they’re not good kids? They’re not drinking. I’ve seen no evidence of drugs. They just have much lower standards.”

He nodded. We both felt for some of the youth there who could use some parental guidance. Would they become productive adults? I smiled as I remembered the offending young man from earlier in the evening, and thought, “I made it.”

“What are you smiling about?” He asked.

I laughed in reply, knowing there was an adult at some dance 45 years ago wondering the same thing about me.

David Wilson Atwood is a local freelance writer whose human-interest columns offer a unique perspective. He may be contacted at david@starchasers.us.