It’s been a while since I’ve posted. To the four or so people who actually read Exit 117, as well as the 15 to 20 who just like the pretty pictures, please forgive me. I’ve no good excuse.
I’ve been traveling a good deal for work lately and, as a result, have had a number of business dinners. As most people will attest, conversations at business dinners typically entail news, weather and sports. They’re remarkably similar to your local newscast served over a steak. The other night, however, somebody brought up the topic of music. In particular, this person opined that everybody associates certain songs with certain events in their life. This drew a pregnant pause, followed by a couple of uneasy chuckles and a prompt change of subject back to sports. The table’s reaction told me this guy might be on to something.
After spending 15 minutes or so considering what songs I associate with particular events in my life, I realized two things. First, there are so many songs that I have to break this topic down into three parts. Second, although I’m about as open of a person as they come, I’m embarrassed and terrified of the words about to hit these pages.
All the more reason to toss them out there.
So now, in no particular order, here are songs I associate with various events in my life. For some reason, more of these involve me dancing (or attempting to dance) than I care to admit. For those of you who enjoy the links, right-click to open them in a new window and avoid navigating away from this page while viewing their content.
The Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood Theme Song: Dancing with Mom
I wasn’t smooth. I wasn’t polished. And I certainly wasn’t Clark Gable.
I was barely four.
And when Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood came on at three o’clock every afternoon, this four-year-old was lucky enough to get a dance with his Mom. Wherever she was, Mom dropped what she was doing and made her way into the living room and my open arms. As Fred Rogers put his shoes on in the background, she’d steady my arrhythmic gallop, pick me up, and spin me to Cloud Nine—singing along all the while.
I hope moms still dance with their kids these days. They probably don’t know how much it means. Heck, when the DJ asked what song my Mom and I wanted to dance to at my wedding, I almost suggested the Mr. Rogers theme song. But when I realized my Mom probably couldn’t pick me up any longer, I figured there wasn’t much point to it.
The Village People’s Macho Man: Entertaining my Sisters and a Bunch of Strangers
Where Mom left off, my older sisters picked up. One of their favorite pastimes was putting the Village People on the turn-table and letting me cut a rug for them and their friends to the tune of Macho Man. I’d parade around flexing my twiggy arms and proclaiming my macho-ness to a bedroom-full of pretty much complete strangers (at least to me). This mucho macho man was a celebrity in his own right, and he didn’t have to don an Indian headdress or leather chaps to make it happen either.
Can you believe people actually thought those guys were gay?
Michael Jackson’s Beat It: My First (and Last) Dance Recital
It was 1985 and break-dancing fever was peaking in suburbia. Every middle-class white kid my age had a piece of cardboard in their garage earmarked for backspins, and I was no exception. But there was one problem:
I sucked at break-dancing.
To illustrate, I almost lost consciousness during my inaugural backspin. Not because of the g-forces created when new parachute pants meet slick cardboard, but because I hit my head on the lawnmower. At best, I could pull off a painfully awkward version of "The Robot," which looked more like a semi-greased Tin Man coming to life in the Wizard of Oz.
So what did I do to keep up with all my breakin’ friends? Sign up for break-dancing lessons at the community center, of course.
Fast forward.
Ten weeks worth of lessons later, break-dancing was no longer cool. On the upside, however, I was no better at break-dancing. But that didn’t change the fact that, as with all such classes, mine culminated in an all-hands-on-deck recital. You know the kind. Where ill-at-ease parents cheer awkwardly for talentless tots, all the while praying to God their kid doesn’t sign up for the intermediate course in whatever they happen to be performing murderously at the time.
The big night arrived and I took the stage with the rest of my classmates before an audience that seemed to consist of the entire town. We were dressed identically in parachute pants complemented by single “Michael Jackson” gloves that shone in the spotlight. Despite our uniform attire, however, the instant Beat It started to play I realized I was very different from all the others. Why?
Because I knew I sucked at break-dancing.
Since it was too late to fake an injury or otherwise bow out, I did what any self-respecting sucky break-dancer would do. I made my way to the darkest corner of the stage I could find and did The Robot to the best of my ability. And when it came time for me to bust out my solo backspin? I tried it.
What the hell? There weren’t any lawn mowers around.
Poison’s Every Rose Has Its Thorn: The Quest for Hiney
I was in the seventh grade—right around the time hormones start making boys think less about baseball and a more about what transpires in the girls locker room. Every couple of months our school would have canteens entailing a darkened gymnasium, a DJ and the occasional, ever-so-coveted “slow song.” Slow songs were like gold to pubescent boys. If you played your cards right, you could do the one thing you and your friends talked about weeks in advance of the canteen:
TOUCH HINEY.
A lot of planning went into this. First, you had to find a girl to dance with you. I won’t even go into steps two and three, because for dorks like me the balance of the process was moot until I could surpass this initial hurdle. I’d been to a couple of canteens without luck. I either lacked the nerve to ask girls to dance or, when I did, they simply said “no.” And it wasn’t even the polite “no” coupled with a remotely plausible excuse such as I’d love to dance with you, but I have to go feed the gorillas at the zoo right now. (By my estimate, girls don’t develop the ability to let boys down easy until high school.)
When the spring canteen rolled around, my situation was dire. I was about to enter eighth grade and it seemed everybody had touched hiney but me.
Enter Lisa H.
Lisa H. sat in front of me in Spanish class and, for some odd reason, actually talked to me (in English). After half a semester of wooing Lisa H. with my ability to conjugate Spanish verbs, I decided to ask her to dance at the spring canteen. In fact, when a couple of other suitors began taking interest, I determined to “lock in” my position by asking her to dance a week before the canteen.
As we settled into Spanish class one afternoon, I made my move. Being too chicken to ask her face-to-face, I decided to do it by way of note. It was pretty simple:
Dance at canteen? Check one: Yes ___ No ___ Maybe ___
When the teacher turned to face the blackboard, I flipped the note over Lisa H.’s shoulder and onto her desk. I held my breath. If this didn’t work, I was certain I’d never touch any hiney but my own (and that didn’t count).
A few minutes passed without feedback of any kind. This is bad I thought. This is very bad. I’d already begun to evaluate the likelihood of getting a dance with our school’s foreign exchange student when Lisa H. dropped her pencil on the floor. While descending to retrieve it, her outstretched hand returned the note. I grasped eagerly, opening it with the vigor of a child on Christmas morning. Afraid to look, I could barely read her response through squinted eyes.
TO BE CONTINUED.
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Great entry!
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