I am the Soul Bismark, Filled with the Jelly of Funk

Dancing is not my thing. Apart from wanting to protect people from that strange feeling of shock and disgust one feels when seeing a quarter-ton creature flail about with unaccustomed energy, I'm just not very good at it. When I tried out for OKLAHOMA! in High School (which is astonishing unto itself, since I can't sing. At all.), they taught all the would-be warblers a basic dance routine to see who could carry it off well enough to be in one of the dance numbers. I...well, let's just say it was uncomfortable for everyone. I did get cast in the show, based I think on the simple fact that those of my gender were not well represented, but I wasn't in any dance numbers. And any singing I did was mercifully "ensemble."

There was a brief period of my life (probably 1995-1996) where I was so desperate to establish marital prospects and flee the horrors of "The Singles Scene" that I found myself at dances and clubs. At such events, I did dance, sort of. The contortions and leaps I undertook really were more of a mosh pit for one than actual "dancing." Good exercise, though.

Given all this, it seems strange to me that I dance now more than ever. Never in public, but almost every night in my living room with my wife and two-year-old son. It feels a lot more tribal than anything I ever did in a club, especially since my son prefers to dance in an ever-repeating circle around a footstool, but maybe that's why I like it. No choreography, no moves, just improvised primal leaps and jiggers. Oh, it would probably still shock, disgust, or frighten onlookers, but my son seems to like it. When I don't fall on him, anyway. Tiny people are just too easy to squish. I'm glad kid bones are so rubbery. I wouldn't handle it well if something that weighed ten times as much as I do (like a truck) fell on me. I certainly wouldn't hug it and laugh afterwards.

Comments

[the wife]

Don't let him fool you. We call him Bootsie Hale, Jive Master, and he can execute a mean bum shimmy.

[Marcus Aurelius]

But the bum gets due process, right? A trial and everything? He wouldn't just execute the bum for being *mean*. I've always considered Dean's rule strict but just.

I like the way Dean dances, regardless.

[Emily Fairchild]

I've always been uncomfortable to dance since I'm 6'2". The "come dance!" pleas by all my little friends that dragged me to dances were answered with "I'm too tall" or with complying only to stand, a head above everyone, glad I wasn't trying to fit in by flailing my arms, which makes up for most of what I can do to dance.....also kinda uncomfortable around short people in general for the same reason of fear of injury. Hands on the hips by me can sometimes mean elbow in the eye for passers by (passerbys??).