I'm A Dancer

I know how Boon felt in "Animal House." When Otis Day and the Knights came to play at the Deltas' Toga Party, he was in heaven. He stood next to the amps and sang into his beer bottle and the music went right through him. He danced because he could feel it.
For many years I refused to dance. All through elementary school I connected dance with that one unit each year in P.E. when we had to do the Virginia Reel and the Mexican Hat Dance - with partners. I got the music and the rhythm, but the partner thing made me extremely nervous - right down to the sweaty palms. As a perennially round kid, I didn't look forward to P.E. very much, but the dance unit was death to me.
In junior high school I attended the sum and total of one dance in three years and I can only recall one dance - "Let It Be" was the last dance of my ninth grade year. I remember trying to dance close, but I wouldn't unclench my fists - I was afraid of dancing that close.
By the time I got to high school and finally got a real girl friend, dancing close was not as big a deal since I saw it as a prelude to making out later anyway. It was around this time that I began to act out my lurid thoughts by dancing way too close with friends of mine who happened to be girls - for comic effect. On one such occasion a passing policeman pulled over and asked if the young lady needed assistance. "No," she laughed, "we're just fooling around." That young lady is now my wife.
In college the music was louder and faster, and I learned to dance for catharsis. I danced alone before Billy Idol suggested it, and kept doing it until I turned thirty. After that, the dance parties started to dwindle for me. Part of being a grown up - a husband, dad, old fart.
For the past few years, the Dads' Club at my son's school has sponsored an end of the year social. We have a band that plays mostly squonky jazz, but can do a little Rolling Stones and some bad funk when they get it on. It was last year that one of the other dads pointed out, after I had been hanging on the edge of the dance floor threatening to shake my moneymaker, "Hey, it's paid for." True enough - it was our party and I could dance if I wanted to. I danced most of the rest of the night. I danced for an hour or more at this year's party. I got good and sweaty. I danced a few dances with my wife, but mostly I flounced and hopped and twisted the night away all by myself. It felt good to be moving and shaking parts that might have otherwise atrophied. I'll be sore in the morning. It will be worth it.