What I Learned at the Square Dance

Last night was the girl scout square dance. What a blast! A couple of hundred goofy, paunchy dads do-si-do’ing with their little girls in the high school gym. In addition to some good clean fun, I learned two things through this:

1. There are words to the “Chicken Dance” song. You know the dance — it starts with the chicken beaks, goes to the flapping wings, and then to the little tail wiggle. So picture that, with about a hundred little girls, singing spontaneously, in unison, and at the top of their lungs: “I don’t want to be a chicken, I don’t want to be a duck, so kiss my butt!” Where do they learn this stuff? I almost doubled over laughing.

2. All high school gymns are kept at a balmy 99 degrees and 90% relative humidity, they all look and smell the same, and as soon as you walk into them, they trigger long repressed memories of that whimpy kid who never could seem to do anything right, who never quite lived up to his potential, and who was mortally afraid that the other guys might notice his relative lack of hair in various manly places. You know, that “friend” of yours who grew up to become a lawyer or pastor or teacher or something, who wonders how he came to be living in a nice house full of little kids who call him “dad,” and who now spends way too much time in front of a computer screen talking to people he’s never even met.