Texas Traditions

** Something else I never thought about....a mum IS a mother, but it is also a flower, a chrysantheMUM. Sorry for the confusion! **

Fall is in the air (OK, not really. It's freakin' 95 here still. But for the sake of the story I'll pretend), the leaves are changing (I'm lying here, too), and the football season makes it way into the hearts of every Texan (This, however, is true).

There is a Texas Tradition that I didn't realize was a Texas thing. At least that's what my non-Texan friends tell me. The tradition is the homecoming mum during the High School homecoming football game. Please tell me we're not the only ones that have homecoming football games.

Anyway, this homecoming mum tradition. Basically, a guy asks a girl to the game (or vice-versa), and he buys her a mum. And you can tell how much a boy likes you by the size of the mum, and how gaudy you look in it. Here is an example (I couldn't find a picture of a mum that I could post, and, golly-gee darn I don't have a scanner to scan a picture of me in High School at homecoming, so that link will have to do. Speaking of which, where does everyone get their cool pictures for their blogs that aren't their own, anyway?).

The mum is about the size of a dinner plate. Sometimes, if the boy REALLY likes you, they will get TWO mums and put one in front and one in the back, going over the shoulder. Usually, however it is a single mum pinned on her chest, and has streamers that literally go to her knees or below. The streamers have kick-knacks on it that represent what the girl is into, such as a clarinet in my case because I played the clarinet, a little plastic volleyball, a whistle, a little teddy bear, or other trikets. Bells were essential, because otherwise how would your girlfriends know you were coming with a gaudy mum unless you had the noisemakers to go with them? The ribbons usually have stickers on them to say "Homecoming 2005" and another that says "Carol -n- Bryan" or something of that nature. Like I said, the gaudier the more the boy liked you, because the gaudier the more expensive.

Then, after the game, the high school girl would hang it in her room until she realized the tradition was both silly and gaudy, usually about the time she goes to college or she and the boy broke up, and then she would throw it out.

I never thought much about the tradition until I became an adult, pulled my very faded mum out of the remembrance box (AKA, the moth ridden, silverfish eaten cardboard box about to collape with a zillion pieces of tape on it up in the attic) and looked at it. And threw it away. I guess I'm a late bloomer.

What traditions do you have that you realized were silly once you thought about it?