DescriptionA short story about how dance can be a metaphor for childhood and the fond memories equated with it.
MessageThis story is dedicated to her late husband, George W. Parsons.
ImageWRTN
If I sounded as good in public as I do singing alone in my car, I’d be a famous recording artist. I used my lower, sultry tone as I sang along with Lionel Ritchie. “Penny Lover, walk on by, Penny Lover, don’t make me cry.” Those lyrics brought me back to the night I met the man I was to marry. It was at a dance. As I drove along, remembering that life-changing night, it occurred to me that dances were rights of passage in my life from adolescence to adulthood.In my early high school years, I lived for the monthly Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) dances. They were held in the cafeteria of the all-girls parochial high school I attended. The countdown to that first Friday of the month filled me with anticipation and anxiety. Who was going? Would anyone ask me to dance? Would they play my favorite records? What would I wear?The dance itself never lived up to my expectations. The school cafeteria was awash with harsh, bright lights. The boys clustered together on one side of the tile-walled room. They milled around in circles, hands stuffed in their pockets, and looking uncomfortable in their white shirts and ties.The girls, in wool plaid skirts and mohair sweaters, bobby socks, and penny loafers, gathered on the opposite side. The few with boyfriends danced to Brenda Lee crooning, “Break It to Me Gently.” They were the envy of the standing crowd, and the subject of gossip in the Girls’ Room. The nuns and priests swarmed in, examining each dancing couple, determined to enforce the required space between partners. “Leave room for the Holy Ghost,” they warned, waving their arms left and right as if to part the waters.As the evening wore on, some of the girls, accepting a boy was not crossing the room for them, danced the Cha Cha to Shelley Fabares’, ‘Johnny Angel,’ or did the Surf to The Beach Boys, ‘Surfin’ Safari.’No CYO dance was complete until the boys got caught smoking in the bathroom, or when a crowd of girls piled into the Girls’ Room to comfort one who was crying because the boy she liked danced with someone else.The real fun started after the dance. The boys caught up with the girls for the three-block walk home. With the pressure of the dance behind us, we talked and laughed and teased. We were back to being neighbors who’d played together since we were toddlers, played Relievo on the street, and raced in the park’s Fourth of July celebration.In my later high school years, I tagged along with my older sister to the Boston College High School (BC High) dances. My feet froze on the subway ride from Cambridge to Dorchester. I could have worn boots but suffered the cold for the chance to wear cute shoes. The BC High dances were different than the CYO dances. Those boys got right to it, no hanging on the sidelines. The auditorium was dimly lit, music played constantly to a crowded dance floor, and the Jesuits didn’t seem concerned about the Holy Ghost.I remember dancing three sets of slow dances with a kid. Our bodies pressed together, sweaty head to sweaty head. We barely saw each other’s faces and didn’t exchange names. We just danced. When the lights came up at the end of the night, we walked away from each other without a word. I considered the night a success.On one memorable Friday night, my sister and I found ourselves the center of attention as we danced the Mashed Potato to Dee Dee Sharp’s hit, ‘Gravy.’ The dance was the new rage on American Bandstand, and we had practiced at home. The lights came up and kids crowded around to watch us deftly shift our weight from side to side, turning our toes in and swinging our heels out, alternating feet. It was the kind of nerve-racking and exhilarating moment a teenage girl fantasizes about.When the school year ended, we’d headed to my grandfather’s cottage at a seaside community. The weekly highlight was Saturday night at the Rexicana Ballroom. The dance hall was on the second floor of an old wooden structure that sat only a few yards from the ocean. Its mirror globe had circled colored lights on dancers since the end of World War II.Hundreds of kids stomped to Chubby Checker’s, ‘Let’s Pony,’ generating a fog-like humidity in the airless dance hall. With all the energy of a sixteen-year-old, I danced non-stop, leaving my body and hair a dripping ball of sweat. The following Saturday as I prepared for the dance, I applied Arid Roll-On Deodorant to my forehead, assuring at least my bangs stayed dry.It was there in this mix of teens from towns surrounding Boston I stepped out of my sheltered, white, Catholic world. It was there I learned, in my naivete, that not every guy or girl played by my parochial schoolgirl rules.Once or twice, as a single mom in her thirties, I tried one of those hotel singles dances. I leaned on the wall, my feet tired from a day at work, longing for a man to ask me to dance, while regretting I’d left my girls with a babysitter. It didn’t take long to decide my time was better spent putting my girls to bed than wishing for the company of a stranger.After deciding against any more singles dances, I agreed to attend a fundraiser, sponsored by my older sister’s running club. It was a dance with a Hawaiian theme. I knew a lot of her friends and was up for some fun. I dutifully purchased a flowered blouse for the event. She sat me at the only open seat at a table of fellow runners. They were mostly men, all sporting loud Hawaiian print shirts, with leis around their necks, except one. To my right sat a bald guy with a little goatee. He was plainly dressed, except for the novelty drink umbrella tucked behind his ear. I thought, “Oh, no, I’m stuck next to a character.”He turned to me and said, “Hello.”With dripping sarcasm, I glanced at his ear and responded, “Nice touch.”He reached, as if he had forgotten about the umbrella, and with all sincerity responded, “Thank you. Would you like to dance?” And we did, me and the character with the umbrella tucked behind his ear, that night and for the next thirty years.