I Hate Dancing - A Creative look at life on and off the dance floor

by: Newbie

                                                            I Hate Dancing

            I realize that I learned everything I needed to know about dancing in 7^th grade; actually I realized I learned much more than I wanted to know about dancing and life in 7^th grade. It all started by having to endure dance class as part of the physical education curriculum at my school.

            The part I think I hate the most about dancing is the having to get out on the floor with someone. When I was in Junior High dance, we had to choose a partner and assume the correct stance for whatever dance we were about to learn. Being a skinny little guy who wasn’t very popular, I usually ended up dancing with Dave. I had secret fantasies of getting paired with Rachel, my secret love, but evidently so did every other guy in class, all of which were bigger and better looking and ever so much more popular than me. Rachel was taken as soon as the teacher told us to choose a partner. And there I was with my finger in my nose, and the only person left was Dave ‘Baggy Britches’ Jepson. We called him Baggy Britches because he always wore pants that were 16 sizes too big. Evidently he had an older brother or an uncle or a Holstein cow that he got his pants from.

            It would have been a little better if Baggy Britches wouldn’t have been 6’ 2” and dumber than a rock. And pairing him with me who was around 5’ 2” and dumber than a rock made for quite a spectacle. Having to take his hand and put my arm around his waste was the pinnacle of Junior High homophobic humiliation.

            All of this to explain why I have such trouble now later in life when I have to go out on the dance floor with equally traumatic people like my wife or my mom. Actually I am over exaggerating; I do fine if the person I am dancing with is:

            A. Female

            B. Without big baggy pants from uncle Holstein

            The second reason I hate dancing is because I suck at it. I have no rhythm, no coordination, and 2 left feet, both attached to the right side of my body. I have to remember what a box is before I can tell my feet to do the box step. Put on top of all that the age old trial of not being very good at admitting I can’t do something, and I get lost in the recipe of disaster that ensues. Who leads and when to lead and what the heck you are supposed to do when you are supposed to be leading, all the time pretending to know what you are supposed to be doing is supposed to be normal. It felt like being a fish out of water. But at least my pants fit.

            If there is one thing that I have realized in the trauma of dancing, it is that there is a part of me that is perpetually stuck in Junior high. I still hate being chosen last for anything, I desperately want to fit in when I meet new people, and I absolutely hate looking like an idiot. And I have danced enough to know that if you want to get from amateur status to Fred Astair status, you have to endure some embarrassment. I am beginning to think it’s worse than that. I think that the really good dancers are the ones who don’t care one bit what they look like. They are able to totally forget about themselves and learn and be in the whole dancing experience with no thought to the idiocy rating they are currently receiving from judgmental wall flowers like myself. How dare they not care what I think? Their willingness to endure any level of critique from the peanut gallery enables them to soar on past all the humiliation, past the awkward Junior High thing, past the dances that partner you with the pant-enhanced people, and on into stardom.

            I hate dancing because I have to forget my self. And doggone it, I have worked hard learning to see the world revolving around me, and I won’t believe it could be any other way. So I know that if I were to really look like an idiot and if I were really able to engage on the floor with my partner, and if I were really willing to learn, I would have to take myself off the thrown of my little universe and just enjoy life. And I take life way too serious for that.

            Dancing becomes a symbol of how I live the rest of life. It becomes a microcosm of my world, unlived, frozen up, uncertain, and afraid. Afraid of humiliation; afraid of being left out; afraid of making mistakes and being judged; and especially afraid of extremely oversized garments.

            The clincher in all of this is that dancing is something God made me to do. Maybe I will never don a pair of hard soled shoes and cut the rug, but I have to, sooner or later, learn to dance with the problems that come my way. I must learn to handle the difficulties in relationship, no matter how tempting it is to get off the floor. I will, sooner or later, have to stop dancing around certain issues and addictions in my life, and learn to do the box step the right way. It’s inevitable, because God made me to dance, and foremost with him.

            So let’s review today’s dance lesson. Grab your partner, let’s forget that there is anybody else in the world to make fun of you, and let’s dance, whether it’s pretty or not.

© 2007 Mike and Laura Ege, www.OutsideEdgeCoaching.com

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