Dance Like Nobody's Watching

[jackofallgeeks]

You know what I really miss? School dances.

Now, of course, as soon as I say that I know it's not-quite-accurate. The 'best' dances, musically speaking, were the earliest; that is, middle school dances, like 6th and 8th grade and stuff. Saying middle school dances had the best music is itself a bit absurd, but things just went down hill from there, in my experience. Before the end of high school everything was hiphop and grinding, and that's really not my sort of thing.

I've been out to clubs and stuff, and they're fun enough when you have friends with you, but it's not dancing, at least not the sort that I miss. I miss walking a girl out onto the floor and couple-dancing to sappy love songs from the 70s and 80s. That's what middle school had, though I was even more awkward and shy then than I am now, so there was conspicuously little actually leading girls to said floor.

I can remember several nice dances in my time; possibly through the nostalgia-haze of time, but still. There was the cruise-dance I went to with Leslie back in Highschool; little dancing, but it was generally a good (if very cold) night. I think there were a couple decent dances with my high school youth group. And the Prom that Liz took me to was nice, if a bit awkward (I was a college guy wandering around with a bunch of high school girls. In retrospect, that happened to me a lot.) And, of course, when I got into Contra in College that was probably the best of times (and yet, as the line goes, the worst of times, too).

The ones with Liz and Leslie were just really... casual. Really nice. Just being there with friends and enjoying ourselves.

Comments

[surichan.livejournal.com]

I miss school dances too - especially that one homeschool dance you took me to. That was my favorite school dance ever.

I wish I knew more high schoolers, so I could maybe be invited to somebody's Prom...

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

Hee, I remember that. I got to take Jean K. to one of those as well, which was several magnitudes of awesome for me at the time. They were good stuff, if significantly lower-budget than most highschools would get (even CHS had a 'nicer' dance in their caferteria). I hear the group that ran it, BEACH, got pretty draconian after that and things generally went down-hill as far as the kids enjoying themselves, but I never really saw the effects of that first-hand.

[bsgnome.livejournal.com]

Maybe there's a support group for that. Not so much an "I-miss-middle-school-dances anonymous" sort of group, but more a "Let's not pretend that middle school type dances aren't still fun" sort of group, which, you know, would be twenty-somethings getting together and having those sorts of dances at given intervals throughout the year.

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

A kind of, "if I knew then what I know now, THIS is how dances would have been," sort of thing? :-p I'm afraid we may be too few and far between, but it might be something to look into.

[amazonmink.livejournal.com]

I totally would have invited you again. It was WAY fun.
We should thrown our own dance. You know when the sides of the country coordinate again. :D

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

You know, that might be a good idea. Something I might like to set up. Especially considering a large number of my friends and family seem to be gravitating toward DC, anyways.

I can see it now. We can rent a dance hall thingum, put up balloons, have punch and little hours d'ouvres and other French words...