July 15, 2005

2005-07-15

Gotta Dance!

My two eldest children recently had their first experience with a school dance. Neither of them wanted to go, though. Anyhow, it brought up memories of my Jr.High School dances.

I think most middle school or Jr. High school dances are about the same. Boys stand on one side of the room, girls stand on the other. Then, usually one particularly brave boy and girl who happen to be professional dancers will go out into the middle of the room and start dancing. This doesn't actually entice the rest of the kids to dance. It only makes them nervous. They turn their backs to the dancing couple and pretend to not realize that the activity being featured at this gathering is DANCING.

At my kid's dance I found out that there were refreshments served, but that they ran out of refreshments about 10 minutes into the dance. I am sure that's because all the kids made a beeline for the food and drinks and it was like a plague of locusts. Eating and drinking gives you something to do besides dancing or staring at the one brave professional dancing couple while you privately bemoan your own secret geek status that you have worked so hard to hide all year.

My school dances didn't have refreshments. At least I don't remember any refreshments. I just remember when we would enter the school gym, the lights would be off which immediately made everyone VERY uncomfortable. The guys we saw everyday would be wearing something that their mother's had decided was "nice", thus it was really dorky. Their hair was ALWAYS slicked down for some bizarre reason. I will NEVER figure that one out. This was the late 1970's and 1980. Who slicked their hair down? The guys at my Jr. High. That's who.
And since we were new to puberty...the reek of deodorant was overpowering. Everyone had made damned sure they wouldn't stink for the occasion.

The girls...well...we were even worse. Because we had morphed into tiny hookers. Our hair was now HUGE, and our mothers had allowed us to use a TINY bit of mascara and lip gloss. But the deal is...there is always some girl who is a tramp and she brings tons of makeup with her, so you meet up in the girl's bathroom with her, and everyone glops up their face for the big dance. We all wore PANTYHOSE for Christ's sake. Even under jeans. Pantyhose? Why? I avoid hose like the plague now. And we ALL wore Candies high heeled shoes. If you didn't wear those, you may as well keep your ass at home. Now, you could wear jeans and still be considered dressed up...because you ironed and starched your jeans so much they could have stood up without you in them. And the jeans of choice then were Sergio Valente or if you had a little more money...Calvin Klein. A shiny, silky shirt or a shirt with silver threads running through it and you were READY. Oh, and our belts...they were this bizarre elastic metal stuff. Very skinny but made of stretchy metal. You HAD to have one of those.
So, there we all were. Standing on opposite sides of the darkened gym while Foreigner played. The girls all wanted "slow" songs. Why? It wasn't like we were going to get asked to dance by any of the geeky dudes. Our playlist was probably like this:

The Village People "YMCA"
The BEE GEES "Stayin Alive"
other craptastic disco shit that I can't even freakin' remember.

OH..KC and the Sunshine Band.

Anyhow...pretty much eventually girls and boys who were "going together" which meant they walked to classes together and talked on the phone everynight would end up dancing and that's how the night would progress.
Eventually, it would become clear that the end of the evening was near.

And that is when at my first dance...it happened. I got asked to dance by a BOY. My thought process went something like this: "FREAKIN' FINALLY!"

So here he comes....his name was Angel. For real. His name was really Angel. I won't use his last name. He was shorter than me. Which was pretty freakin' short. I never grew past 5'1". He sat next to me in band. We both played the freakin' trumpet. (I gave it up after 7th grade) This is sorta interesting information for you to keep handy.

Anyhow, he comes up and asks me to dance. And I'm like..."Okay. I guess."
but I was thinking..."EWWW! ANGEL???? EWWW!" But you think I wasn't gonna dance? Hell NO! I'm dancing, baby!
So, he takes my hand to lead me out to the floor, and that is when I remembered:

Angel had webbed fingers.

No shit. He had webbed fingers on both hands. I wanted to vomit or die or something. And his hands were REALLY REALLY tiny. And he was shorter than me. Plus I was wearing my Candies. So we get out there and GAAAAAAAHHH! a slow song starts! Oh God. Now he is going to put his little webbed fingers on ME and we are going to have to like...TOUCH and dance CLOSE! NOOOO! But I had committed and I was NOT going to be a girl who didn't dance at the dance.
So I did it. I danced with Web Fingers. And he smelled like bacon grease. And his hair was WAY slicked down. And his dad was a mailman. I remember that.

Anyhow, the whole trumpet playing thing? I always thought it was sorta weird that he chose the trumpet to play with those fingers. He had very little mobility, after all.

So. That was my first dance. I danced with Web Fingered Angel who smelled like Bacon grease. He was a very nice guy. We went all the way through Jr. High and High School together, but never made any sort of physical contact again. We would say "Hey" in the halls over the next few years, but that was it. I hope he met a nice girl and got married and I hope his children don't have webbed fingers.