Welcome back to Feeding the Mouth That Bites You, a weekly podcast guide on parenting teens and launching them into the world.

I'm Jessica Pfeiffer, and as always, I'm joined by psychologist and author, Dr. Ken Wilgis.

So, Dr. Ken, my living room is covered in ribbons.

Ribbons? What is it, a birthday? What is this?

No, it's homecoming. Homecoming's coming up.

Oh, no. You don't have, you're not, you're not doing, what is it, mums?

Mums and garters. Yes. Okay, Jessica, you're going to have to explain to the worldwide listenership. What are you talking about?

Okay. So the tradition in Texas. In Texas. Other places probably. And probably some other places. But I think it's concentrated in Texas from what I gather.

Yeah, we are nuts. Is that homecoming when you have a football game, you have a football game in the fall, you celebrate by inviting all of the alumni back from wherever they've scattered to, back to the school that they once attended for us. It's a high school. But the colleges had stuff to with us too. Sure. So homecoming, you know, everybody comes back for this football game.

A lot of people come back and see family and friends.

They haven't seen in a while.

And while they're doing that, they celebrate by wearing these enormous mums.

Chrysanthemum is where it came from.

Chrysanthemum, right?

Yes, from the actual flower, except this is not, there's no real flower involved now.

There was when i was in high

school not anymore they there's no way that someone could here there's no way that something like this

could be produced it by anything other than you know oh i've got stories i know and they don't smell

good either no so it's a mom that's imagine like, maybe even bigger than a dinner plate, dinner plate at least, but some of them are more like platters that you would serve a turkey on.

Like a group of flowers.

This is a corsage, we're talking.

Something that's supposed to be worn somehow.

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