Become a Dancing Fool?

I'm Halfway There

By Dale Short I still can't get over the fact that dancing is no longer considered a mortal sin. I mean, nobody sent me the memo that everything had changed. For those of us who grew up in rural Walker County in the 1950s, the evilness of the "D" word was never in doubt. For instance, when I was in elementary school, a new young teacher from Up North once announced to us that she would enrich our cultural lives by teaching us "folk dance," beginning the next day, and that it would pair us nineyear-old males and females in random and fun combinations to the music of foreign civilizations we had never heard before. Considering that the Internet wouldn't even be created for another halfcentury, the word of this curriculum development spread among parents and church leaders in our community with amazing speed, before sunset. There were rumors that an angry delegation of deacons burned this impudent young woman's house and bought her a MissAla bus ticket, but these turned out to be wishful thinking. I do know that her folk dance plans did not take effect the next day, and that at semester break she was mysteriously reassigned to a school district unimaginably far away (Jefferson County?). But, I digress. The whole reason for the churches' fear of co-ed dancing was that some young female might unknowingly make a move that some young male interpreted as "sexually suggestive." At which point, Scripture was off the table and it was a case of Katy-bar-the-door. So to speak. To which 13-year-old guys were thinking, "Dancing is sexually suggestive? Yeah, like girls just breathing are not." Too much information? Sorry. To make a long story shorter, I have personally achieved abstinence (from dancing) for more than half a century now. Yet, hope springs eternal. Confession? In a former life, I once became so desperate for love and acceptance by my (dancing fools) friends and colleagues that I agreed to take a six-week course in ballroom dancing. The night before, a tornado wiped out the venue. A sign from God, as to my potential for dancing? I leave it to the jury, ladies and gentlemen. Anyhow. The idea of myself dressing up in coat and tie, dancing with a partner in a ballroom full of people, for hours, while colleagues assess my hopeless

absence of dancing ability and remark upon it to one another, and I finish the night sweaty and tired? I'm sorry, but that seems to me like a typical day at work. My fondest dream, dance-wise? I want to hit a stage out of nowhere, and move like David Byrne in the Talking Heads' concert video "Stop Making Sense." To dominate a stage like that, and make viewers think: "Wow! This is cosmic..." Whereas, if a person had moved like that on the sidewalk or in the mall, viewers would think: "Is he OK? Should we call 9-1-1?" In other words, like Michael Stipe of REM. Like Joe Cocker, onstage at Woodstock. Like Bruce Springsteen, when that girl jumped onstage at the concert and he danced with her for like a minute, and people were like, "Awww!" Like...like... OK, I won't spoil the surprise. But one day before long, I might just break loose, now that the mere act of dancing won't consign me to The Bad Place. If I can accumulate some extra pain medicine for my arthritic condition, I may even go for broke. Any day, I may Bust a Move. Pray for me, that I don't bust anything else. Amen. ### (Dale Short is a native of Walker County. His columns, books, and photographs are available online at www.carrolldaleshort.com, and his radio show "Music from Home" airs Sundays at 6 pm on Oldies 101.5 FM. For information about his weekly writing workshops in Sumiton, call Woni's Bookshelf at 648-6161.)