Educational Experience

Part III--Chapter 27 in its entirety

The beginning of this chapter has been reworked a great deal, so the "snippet" I published before the New Year may be unrecognizable. But this is a first draft, after all! I tried to cram all the goings on at the prom into one chapter, but that didn't work--there were too many things that needed to happen and be explored. So this is the first half of the prom night extravaganza, and I think it contains some very sweet and somewhat unexpected moments--one of them is related to the song above.

The end, as I've said often, is near. And these warm-hearted moments are what I'll miss most when I'm don writing this story. May we all find a Colton to brighten our lives--or BECOME the Colton who brightens the lives of others. Even better!

"Parents, if that limo went to pick up your kids from prom and discovered they'd run off to another prom, here's the skinny. Responding to a flurry of live feeds from kids attending the DeGrazia High dance fest, students from all over Arizona hit the road hoping the hits would keep on comin'. And they did..."

That's how they reported it on TV news that night. And yes, they said all over Arizona, not just Tucson. We had kids from miles and miles away dancing in the parking lot after a while. Cops had to put up road blocks, thanks to the damned Internet.

HuffPo called it "an impromptu EDM extravaganza," but it was crazier than that. See, some fool tweeted that Daft Punk was there. Yeah, like that would happen.

But the tweeter had seen another tweet showing this trick we played on everybody when we first arrived, me and my little prom crew. It was pretty dope, actually, and that's the first thing that got live streamed and YouTubed and Facebook'd to death that night.

We had the first DJ, just a local guy they'd already hired, make all this static like his sound system was having some serious technical issues. And then the whole place went pitch black. We almost couldn't get into our places on stage because we were cracking up so hard at all the kids screaming and running around. Only, after what happened at that concert in Paris awhile back—the terrorists shooting all those people--they were right to freak out like that, now that I think about it. What a horrible world we live in now, I swear.

But right after the lights went out, the Vegas DJs took over and played those notes everyone hears in their heads in that Close Encounters movie—that's the Daft Punk part that started the big migration. It's exactly how they started all their live concerts back after Coachella.

So some DeGrazia kids realized something cool was about to happen and started whistling and yelling, "Yeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" But there were still a lot of kids who were just totally terrified. Until they heard that eerie electronic voice go: "ROOOO-BOT!"

Now, if that was all you saw, maybe you would think Daft Punk was actually there. Except, if you know anything about Daft Punk at all, the one thing you know is they don't hardly play live, ever. And yet, everybody's always thinking they're playing somewhere—Burning Man got double burned one year, too, by rumors.

Just so you know, though, I totally get why everybody's always praying they'll show up somewhere. They're on a whole 'nother level. Nobody has ever dared to compare themselves to Daft Punk seriously. It'd be career suicide. You can't do what they do. You can't even figure out how they do what they do. You just can't. Best to just genuflect and move on. Don't believe me? Here's a link to the best concert of all time—don't even try to argue with me, just watch: https://vimeo.com/10851313

But basically, after that first "Robot," it goes:

"Eeeeeeuuuuumannnn

ROBOT