Wearing mums to homecoming football games is huge tradition in Texas. Mums are expensive and heavy and attention-getting, and I recall hearing ones adorned with tiny metal footballs jangling on tassles as various nifty mum-recipients made their ways down the halls. Like these feathered-hair, Jean Nate-smelling girls in the mid 80s, brimming with prosperity and popularity.
And what if you didn’t have a mum to tote around from class to class ALL DAY LONG on that relentlessly endless Friday of the homecoming game? Well, look in the mirror. That absence of three feet of ribbon on your chest spells L-O-S-E-R. It’s how they separate the wheat from the chaff.
And don’t forget about the male accompaniment. This fellow is sporting the matching homecoming “garter,” just for boys. He’s pepper to her salt. Maybe that “M” is for mum?
And it’s still a big deal now, my friend, as you can see down below. What you CAN’T see is what they’re wearing underneath all that mumminess!
In the words of Men At Work, I’d have to say these silvery white mums are “overkill.” Ten dollars says they’ll have nacho cheese on them by the third quarter.
I Don't Get It 
Yikes! Mums the word. 😀
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I don’t think this is just a Texas tradition. I seem to recall buying mums in high school. As far as the nacho cheese goes I think you are right.
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Did you? Oh, that was nice of you. No garter, I suppose, eh?
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No that garter thing is new to me.
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Did the tradition also include: ‘If you try to touch my under the flower one more time I’ll tell your mum’ by any chance, Kerbey? Amy Schumer would not have worn that thing, I’m pretty sure. Good thing she grew up on Long Island. As I recall from my generation, we had no flowers or garters in our homecomng traditions. Did we have homecoming traditions? A homecoming? Possibly and probably. Yikes on how that Texas thang looks.
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A bit gauche, eh?
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Yeah, that’s the word for it, Kerbey.
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We just wrap the flowers around our necks and call them lei which leads to the ancient and inevitable thing about getting lei’d on prom night.
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Even I’ve heard a hundred lei jokes in my life, way over here. You must be so over them.
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oh my goodness! I have never heard of this ever, but it is so awesome I can’t even handle it..wow! this is a great post
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Thanks! It is a weird extravagant accessory, no? Yet another way to separate the in crowd from the out. Oh, to have a cute boy buy me a mum!!
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Kerby, I found this picture on google. I know these girls. This was my high school in North Richland Hills,TX. The Richland Rebels, Class of 86. I loved our mums. They were simple. They smelled wonderful! They were made with REAL flowers. Nothing fake. In fact if you showed up with a silk mum you were looked down upon. Now I can’t even find a real flower to make my son one for his girl friend who happens to be a Birdville Hawk.
Thank you for the trip down memory lane.
Suzie Ayres
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Oh, I’m so glad you could relate. How funny that you knew these girls. Go, class of ’86! Mums sure have changed since then.
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