I Was Thinking About…School Dances and Mixin’ It Up
By Andy Lee
Dudes, remember middle school dances? Still get hives thinking about all that awkwardness under crepe paper streamers. Yet those gymnasium shindigs occupy prime real estate in my memory logs.
Recall the rush scoping out who’d be there while drowning myself in Drakkar Noir from Dad’s cabinet? Praying this might just be the night my wormy limbs channeled Patrick Swayze rather than a flapping weirdo.
We all told parents we were “going with the guys.” Translation: rapidly paired off the moment Bon Jovi started blaring from the speakers. Slow dances meant getting brave, inching closer to that one special girl hoping she wouldn’t laugh at my moves. But damn, she smelled good!
Dancing itself meant no grinding per Mom’s lectures. You know, “Leave enough room for Jesus between you two”. Just jumping and bopping to release that jittery energy of standing so close to your crush without barfing. Occasionally you’d go for the classic slow dance pose—her arms around your neck, your hands on her hips. Grasping each other at that perfectly prudish distance, swaying along until Bryan Adams tipped you over the cliff’s edge, hoping this might be the moment for an epic first kiss as the gym erupted.
High school cranked it all exponentially. Crossing aesthetic lines based on who snagged you first—cheerleader, drama kid, band member. I always tried to wear something nice for her, although I would have worn sweats if that’s what she liked. Something magic happened on that dance floor, walls vanishing as we giggled over inside jokes from History class rather than worrying what the team might think. In the strobe lights’ glow, rocking together in perfect rhythm, the idea of “types” evaporated—just two souls getting our Groove on.
Today’s kids interact more virtually. But those dance floor crucibles forced us to face our crush IRL, enduring the exhilarating vulnerability of putting ourselves out there as we grabbed life by the last crepe paper streamer. School dances slammed hard—yet that clumsy intimacy grounded me in forging identity among real world peers, not just online avatars.
Stay stellar, keep rockin’! 🕺
I was thinking about... 