Sometimes I think I grew up in the 50s
April 28, 2016 1:27 PM Subscribe
Mary J. Breen writes for The Toast. She's a 71 year old Canadian. She wrote an essay about high school dances back when sock hops meant wearing your bobby socks.
And now, fifty-five years later, I do wonder why I kept going to those dances, though of course teenagers do things for tangled, overlapping reasons, reasons both complicated and simple, critical and shallow, and most of all, for reasons deeply unclear to themselves. Back then, wanting to be in a certain place at a certain time with certain people felt like it had life-or-death consequences. So yes, I felt I had to keep going to those dances.
I loved this post, because I can relate. I loved going to high school dances in the 90s. Very different than the sock ups described, but still very important for me. If there was a Much Music video dance, it cost me more than my weekly allowance, so I had to save up.
posted by Gor-ella at 2:07 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Gor-ella at 2:07 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
Dance (with the exception of "banquets" and prom) are all but dead at the school I work at. When I started here, 20 years ago, they were still a thing and we were all required to chaperone two a year. I'd guess that right around 2000, the older kids decided dances were for younger kids and the younger kids decided they must not be cool when the older kids stopped coming.
I would go to dances in the 80's if I had a girlfriend who forced me to go (or if it were a multi-school event, like a Junior Achivement dance or something) but my experience was that they were painful events where my low place in the social pecking order was driven home (unless I was there with a girlfriend - as it happened, my bullies never dated and totally left me alone when I was dating for reasons that are likely too complicated for me to unpack). Also, the music rarely was music I enjoyed.
However, for a brief magical window in my last two years in school, tons of the music from the local college station suddenly broke into the mainstream and for a couple of years, there was an actual overlap with music I liked and music my classmates liked. Despite all of my mixed to negative feelings about my high school experiences, being at a prom with 600 other people all going nuts to Billy Idol's "Dancing With Myself" was one of the most cathartic experiences of my teenage life. Team loyalty I suppose, but all of us punk/new wave kids at my school felt like we'd won even if nobody else saw it that way.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:08 PM on April 28, 2016 [3 favorites]
I would go to dances in the 80's if I had a girlfriend who forced me to go (or if it were a multi-school event, like a Junior Achivement dance or something) but my experience was that they were painful events where my low place in the social pecking order was driven home (unless I was there with a girlfriend - as it happened, my bullies never dated and totally left me alone when I was dating for reasons that are likely too complicated for me to unpack). Also, the music rarely was music I enjoyed.
However, for a brief magical window in my last two years in school, tons of the music from the local college station suddenly broke into the mainstream and for a couple of years, there was an actual overlap with music I liked and music my classmates liked. Despite all of my mixed to negative feelings about my high school experiences, being at a prom with 600 other people all going nuts to Billy Idol's "Dancing With Myself" was one of the most cathartic experiences of my teenage life. Team loyalty I suppose, but all of us punk/new wave kids at my school felt like we'd won even if nobody else saw it that way.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:08 PM on April 28, 2016 [3 favorites]
Also, this is one of my favorite articles on music and life ever.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:08 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:08 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
Many of us have a story about a given teacher who has touched us in a certain way (get your heads out of the gutter please), and most often it's academic, but for me it was a jr high school teacher I didn't even have for class. She was goofy and fun, and made herself the center of a dance circle at every jr high school dance, we called them morps in the 70's, cause it was prom spelled backwards. the cool kids could dance in pairs, or do the latest steps, but for us geeky nerd kids, we always knew that we had a place to go when "rubber band man" , "kung fu fighting" or "disco duck" came on. I remember she used to teach kids the steps to "the hustle" and then send us out in pairs to practice.
I haven't thought about her in years, and sadly, can't even (without digging out an old yearbook) put a name to the memories, but i hope she's still out there dancing.
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:10 PM on April 28, 2016 [25 favorites]
I haven't thought about her in years, and sadly, can't even (without digging out an old yearbook) put a name to the memories, but i hope she's still out there dancing.
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:10 PM on April 28, 2016 [25 favorites]
Am I weird to actually like dancing :( ? I actually like dancing. I went to dances to dance.
If I didn't have a date (nearly always) I danced with friends. The only thing I dreaded was a slow dance (even when you're dating, I found them tedious; I wasn't gonna Get Busy in front of everyone, and swaying slowly back and forth had limited charms).
My biggest frustrations with dancing came from the fact that most boys were total insecure duds about it and wouldn't even bother to learn the most basic steps or try the most basic hip-shake. Ugh. Whereas most girls will at least keep a beat. I often griped that boys had no idea how many girls they could get a chance to be close to if they were decent on a dance floor.
In college, we went to a local honkytonk and did some two-stepping, though even in those days, knowledge of how to Cotton-Eyed Joe or scottische was getting rarer.
posted by emjaybee at 2:25 PM on April 28, 2016 [3 favorites]
If I didn't have a date (nearly always) I danced with friends. The only thing I dreaded was a slow dance (even when you're dating, I found them tedious; I wasn't gonna Get Busy in front of everyone, and swaying slowly back and forth had limited charms).
My biggest frustrations with dancing came from the fact that most boys were total insecure duds about it and wouldn't even bother to learn the most basic steps or try the most basic hip-shake. Ugh. Whereas most girls will at least keep a beat. I often griped that boys had no idea how many girls they could get a chance to be close to if they were decent on a dance floor.
In college, we went to a local honkytonk and did some two-stepping, though even in those days, knowledge of how to Cotton-Eyed Joe or scottische was getting rarer.
posted by emjaybee at 2:25 PM on April 28, 2016 [3 favorites]
Did every high school in the 98-01 period have that group of kids that were really, really good at swing dancing? Or was that just us?
I went to all 16 dances our school had in the time that I was there (17 counting an additional prom at another school). I think I thought they might have been cool? I haven't thought about it in ages, but looking back on it now, I can't believe I cared so much. The tickets, corsages, limo rides, and photos must have cost my parents a small fortune. I didn't even consider that at the time- or that other kids didn't have help paying for everything.
Of course the whole thing is even more comical, because of the 17 people I went with, none of them were of the gender I might actually have preferred dancing with!
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 2:25 PM on April 28, 2016 [4 favorites]
I went to all 16 dances our school had in the time that I was there (17 counting an additional prom at another school). I think I thought they might have been cool? I haven't thought about it in ages, but looking back on it now, I can't believe I cared so much. The tickets, corsages, limo rides, and photos must have cost my parents a small fortune. I didn't even consider that at the time- or that other kids didn't have help paying for everything.
Of course the whole thing is even more comical, because of the 17 people I went with, none of them were of the gender I might actually have preferred dancing with!
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 2:25 PM on April 28, 2016 [4 favorites]
I went to junior and senior high school in the late 80's, and school dances were a big part of school life. I still remember them so clearly and vividly. It was so much fun dancing with the girls, and so much terror and trepidation surrounded "slow dancing" to Purple Rain or Stairway to Heaven (every school dance ended with Stairway to Heaven).
My 13-year-old son has shown no interest in going to the school dance, and I don't even know if they have them anymore.
posted by My Dad at 2:26 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
My 13-year-old son has shown no interest in going to the school dance, and I don't even know if they have them anymore.
posted by My Dad at 2:26 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
Regarding swing dance in 98-01, our school definitely had a group of kids who were mad good at swing dancing. Brian Setzer's second big contribution to world culture, that.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:30 PM on April 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:30 PM on April 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
I hated school dances with a fiery passion. I always felt awkward and out of place, even if I was there with a a date or, best of all, a girlfriend. Dances at the nerd camp I went to every summer (95-98) were sublime things that made the night great. I belonged there, the music was not what was on the popular charts (either it was older (late 80's/really early 90's or it was from outside the mainstream) and it didn't matter how you danced.
So I know what the author is talking about wanting, I had it for those few nights every summer.
Now I'm all nostalgic.
posted by Hactar at 2:33 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
So I know what the author is talking about wanting, I had it for those few nights every summer.
Now I'm all nostalgic.
posted by Hactar at 2:33 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
(every school dance ended with Stairway to Heaven)
And smooshed in the middle there were "Rock Lobster" and "Shout (You Make Me Wanna)" and the "Time Warp."
As a 14 year old in the late 1980s, school dances were a rare chance to go out with my friends and just let loose in a space that was for us. There's Starbucks all over the place now, but back in the 1980s, the so-called "third spaces" in my sleepy Virginia 'burb were harder to come by. The school dances one district put on as fundraisers were perfect for cash-strapped teens who wanted to be out somewhere, anywhere but someone's house.
I can't dance beyond the usual 1980s white girl bounce, BTW. But that was the fun of going to dances at other schools! It was freeing to not be around my classmates and to dance for two or three hours, emerging from the school all sweaty and exhilarated and exhausted.
I didn't attend dances at my own school. Too many social landmines.
posted by sobell at 2:49 PM on April 28, 2016 [4 favorites]
And smooshed in the middle there were "Rock Lobster" and "Shout (You Make Me Wanna)" and the "Time Warp."
As a 14 year old in the late 1980s, school dances were a rare chance to go out with my friends and just let loose in a space that was for us. There's Starbucks all over the place now, but back in the 1980s, the so-called "third spaces" in my sleepy Virginia 'burb were harder to come by. The school dances one district put on as fundraisers were perfect for cash-strapped teens who wanted to be out somewhere, anywhere but someone's house.
I can't dance beyond the usual 1980s white girl bounce, BTW. But that was the fun of going to dances at other schools! It was freeing to not be around my classmates and to dance for two or three hours, emerging from the school all sweaty and exhilarated and exhausted.
I didn't attend dances at my own school. Too many social landmines.
posted by sobell at 2:49 PM on April 28, 2016 [4 favorites]
" I often griped that boys had no idea how many girls they could get a chance to be close to if they were decent on a dance floor. "
Heh, this is how my grandfather became a polka expert in the early 30s -- he grew up in Polish Catholic Chicago but was not Polish himself and to meet girls he learned to polka like crazy because even back then girls at parish hall dances were complaining about boys who couldn't or wouldn't dance properly.
I used to think everyone's family parties eventually broke out into polkas (one of my great-uncles always brought his accordion to provide the music), but NOPE JUST MINE.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:01 PM on April 28, 2016 [17 favorites]
Heh, this is how my grandfather became a polka expert in the early 30s -- he grew up in Polish Catholic Chicago but was not Polish himself and to meet girls he learned to polka like crazy because even back then girls at parish hall dances were complaining about boys who couldn't or wouldn't dance properly.
I used to think everyone's family parties eventually broke out into polkas (one of my great-uncles always brought his accordion to provide the music), but NOPE JUST MINE.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:01 PM on April 28, 2016 [17 favorites]
The high schools here have prom of course, and I think they might have one in the fall, which is pretty similar to what we had (Homecoming, Christmas Dance, Prom). My eldest went to prom his senior year, but that was it.
Now, my youngest...they have Father/Daughter and Mother/Son dances at the elementary schools, but he's never wanted to go to those. What he does absolutely love is the big dance floor at the Halloween festival. The fact that his PE class practiced to do Thriller may have contributed, but he was out there doing the Nae Nae and whatever else that makes me feel like yelling at them to get off my lawn. We'll see if he stays enthusiastic about it; I hope so.
posted by Four Ds at 3:04 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
Now, my youngest...they have Father/Daughter and Mother/Son dances at the elementary schools, but he's never wanted to go to those. What he does absolutely love is the big dance floor at the Halloween festival. The fact that his PE class practiced to do Thriller may have contributed, but he was out there doing the Nae Nae and whatever else that makes me feel like yelling at them to get off my lawn. We'll see if he stays enthusiastic about it; I hope so.
posted by Four Ds at 3:04 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
In the mid-80s suburbs we went to dances to be able to get out of the house and hang out with friends without having to just drive around all night and/or park in the Burger King parking lot for two hours after getting drivethru.
posted by rhizome at 3:08 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by rhizome at 3:08 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
I also remember the chorus to Billy Idol's version of "Mony Mony" as "Hey motherfucker, get laid, get fucked." The teachers were not too happy but for some reason the same scene played out every school dance.
posted by My Dad at 3:08 PM on April 28, 2016 [13 favorites]
posted by My Dad at 3:08 PM on April 28, 2016 [13 favorites]
I could never dance and was a really awkward kid that didn't come out of the awkward phase until I was, oh, 35 or so, but in grade 9 and 10 my locker was next to this older girl named Jackie who was super nice and everyone had a crush on, and she knew how awkward and shy I was, and would come find me at the dances and pull me up to dance with her sometimes, and all the cool kids would be like "woah Hoopo is dancing with Jackie?" Such a nice thing for her to do, I've never forgotten about it.
posted by Hoopo at 3:31 PM on April 28, 2016 [13 favorites]
posted by Hoopo at 3:31 PM on April 28, 2016 [13 favorites]
I was so oblivious in high school that I never actually when or where dances were. It's not like I actively avoided them, I just never heard or saw anything about them. I remember my parents asking me about a prom or something and I just looked mystified at them and shrugged my shoulders. I'm sure that they thought I was on drugs or something but I was just living in my own universe.
posted by octothorpe at 4:48 PM on April 28, 2016
posted by octothorpe at 4:48 PM on April 28, 2016
In case you missed it, from the "about the author" bit at the very bottom (emph. added):
posted by mhum at 5:25 PM on April 28, 2016 [5 favorites]
Mary J. Breen’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in literary magazines, national newspapers, essay collections, and travel magazines. She lives in Peterborough, Canada where, among other things, she teaches memoir writing with seniors.Like a cherry on top.
posted by mhum at 5:25 PM on April 28, 2016 [5 favorites]
Many of us have a story about a given teacher who has touched us in a certain way (get your heads out of the gutter please), and most often it's academic, but for me it was a jr high school teacher I didn't even have for class. She was goofy and fun, and made herself the center of a dance circle at every jr high school dance
My high school had a cool teacher who, to this day, is the coolest instructor anywhere i've ever had. He only worked there for about a year, and i only had one class with him... but he was assigned to DJ a couple of the dances.
He borrowed my friends PA, and showed up at the dance with... a full sized traffic light.
He proceeded to dance like michael jackson with that traffic light, and do the worm, and breakdance. The guy could seriously dance. And he was going apeshit. He humped the traffic light through the dance floor in every possible way you can imagine.
Midway in, he just cued up 3-4 songs and danced with me and all my friends doing handstands and shit.
Coolest school dance ever.
Epilogue: After college, he ended up being my neighbor. I watched him destroy his bedroom door with a broadsword he was trying to swing around like he-man... semi accidentally.
posted by emptythought at 6:22 PM on April 28, 2016 [9 favorites]
My high school had a cool teacher who, to this day, is the coolest instructor anywhere i've ever had. He only worked there for about a year, and i only had one class with him... but he was assigned to DJ a couple of the dances.
He borrowed my friends PA, and showed up at the dance with... a full sized traffic light.
He proceeded to dance like michael jackson with that traffic light, and do the worm, and breakdance. The guy could seriously dance. And he was going apeshit. He humped the traffic light through the dance floor in every possible way you can imagine.
Midway in, he just cued up 3-4 songs and danced with me and all my friends doing handstands and shit.
Coolest school dance ever.
Epilogue: After college, he ended up being my neighbor. I watched him destroy his bedroom door with a broadsword he was trying to swing around like he-man... semi accidentally.
posted by emptythought at 6:22 PM on April 28, 2016 [9 favorites]
Did every high school in the 98-01 period have that group of kids that were really, really good at swing dancing? Or was that just us?
I was one of those kids, though I didn't get really good until college. So, yes, I assume every high school had at least two.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:48 PM on April 28, 2016
I was one of those kids, though I didn't get really good until college. So, yes, I assume every high school had at least two.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:48 PM on April 28, 2016
Ironically, though, I still hated high school dances.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:51 PM on April 28, 2016
posted by tobascodagama at 6:51 PM on April 28, 2016
People from the cities used to joke that my town was stuck in the 1950s (wait a beat ... the joke was always the same ... the 1850s), and maybe there was some truth there - 1958 sounds a lot like 1984, right down to the late night radio stations that let us know about a wider world out there.
I'm shocked that there are schools today without dances. I was one of the social outcasts too, but loved being on the dance floor. I don't know how, or if, I would have survived high school without our monthly dances.
posted by kanewai at 7:21 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm shocked that there are schools today without dances. I was one of the social outcasts too, but loved being on the dance floor. I don't know how, or if, I would have survived high school without our monthly dances.
posted by kanewai at 7:21 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
I went to a few school dances. They were neither awful nor wonderful. I was never fortunate enough to be in one of the couples that would go looking for an unlocked storage closet to get it on during the dance, but it was also never traumatic or awful. Musically things were pretty bad, with Purple Rain and that "I'm your Venus, I'm your fire" song on repeat, and a slow dance song about every half hour.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:35 PM on April 28, 2016
posted by Dip Flash at 7:35 PM on April 28, 2016
Y'all know that the kids these days are having dance competitions -- INTERNATIONAL dance competitions -- on YouTube, right? Just do some searches for naenae or Dougie or jookin or frog back or dutty wine or I'm dating myself, those are some years old by now, but just go looking, they are out there, and it is the most heartening stuff.
I was one of those late 90s swing dancers, just at the periphery of the swing explosion that rocked LA, epicenter The Brown Derby. Before that I was the annoying white girl who would pester any of the (two? there were only two in my class, I think) black girls to teach me moves (sorry, Tamara and Carol), and I would pester the popular girls and the girls in theater. And I pestered the teachers to let us have dances with the public schools, because they were the only ones with any good moves and how else was I supposed to learn how to do those amazing, human-flight moves from the intro to Living Single? But they told us the public schools were too big, which was such a blatant cover for racism and classism that I didn't even believe it then. Eventually I dated a guy from public school and got to go to one of his dances, and it was every bit as glorious as I'd hoped, though with a lot more grinding that I didn't get any part of because I was on his arm.
There was this one guy at my school who made fun of my dancing and when I challenged him to show me his moves he told me he had a hairline fracture in his ankle and next year he gave me the same excuse and I always thought that was the telling detail of what a sad pathetic sack he was.
Why were dances important? Dances were *so* important. (See: Hairspray.) Girls at my school were expected to do ballet, that narcissistic, body-hating, conformist display for the patriarchy. Like the author said, music and dances were a way out.
(Happy ending to my story: I moved to New York City, and fell into community African dance classes. I can now re-create the intro from Living Single. Dance Parade -- a citywide celebration in protest of the Prohibition-era cabaret laws which demand licenses from clubs if people want to dance -- is a few weekends from now. As the weather turns nice, the African drummers and weekend house music parties in the parks blossom like the trees.)
posted by gusandrews at 10:15 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
I was one of those late 90s swing dancers, just at the periphery of the swing explosion that rocked LA, epicenter The Brown Derby. Before that I was the annoying white girl who would pester any of the (two? there were only two in my class, I think) black girls to teach me moves (sorry, Tamara and Carol), and I would pester the popular girls and the girls in theater. And I pestered the teachers to let us have dances with the public schools, because they were the only ones with any good moves and how else was I supposed to learn how to do those amazing, human-flight moves from the intro to Living Single? But they told us the public schools were too big, which was such a blatant cover for racism and classism that I didn't even believe it then. Eventually I dated a guy from public school and got to go to one of his dances, and it was every bit as glorious as I'd hoped, though with a lot more grinding that I didn't get any part of because I was on his arm.
There was this one guy at my school who made fun of my dancing and when I challenged him to show me his moves he told me he had a hairline fracture in his ankle and next year he gave me the same excuse and I always thought that was the telling detail of what a sad pathetic sack he was.
Why were dances important? Dances were *so* important. (See: Hairspray.) Girls at my school were expected to do ballet, that narcissistic, body-hating, conformist display for the patriarchy. Like the author said, music and dances were a way out.
(Happy ending to my story: I moved to New York City, and fell into community African dance classes. I can now re-create the intro from Living Single. Dance Parade -- a citywide celebration in protest of the Prohibition-era cabaret laws which demand licenses from clubs if people want to dance -- is a few weekends from now. As the weather turns nice, the African drummers and weekend house music parties in the parks blossom like the trees.)
posted by gusandrews at 10:15 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
I graduated in 2004, and dances were a big thing at my high school. Our school had a huge number of cultural dance groups - think step and Phillipino dance, not modern or ballet - and our teachers clearly actively supported dance/music as a central element to our school's community, which extended to regular dances (we had 2 formals and 4 casual a year... Welcome Dance, Homecoming, Winter Formal, Sadie Hawkins, Prom, Aloha End-of-year Dance). Our dances were always packed and often had visitors from other schools. However, it wasn't like that at the surrounding high schools - our neighbor schools might have killed us at every sport except track, but we killed it on the dance floor. I think it's because the teachers kind of just let us do our own thing - even if kids were dancing pretty damn dirty. They let us be physical and fun, playing and enjoying the music, and still safe and within view of responsible adults. It was amazing - so freeing. Dances were really popular.
I heard that the year after I graduated, the teachers started enforcing rules about propriety on the dance floor and kids stopped going.
posted by samthemander at 11:04 PM on April 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
I heard that the year after I graduated, the teachers started enforcing rules about propriety on the dance floor and kids stopped going.
posted by samthemander at 11:04 PM on April 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
My biggest frustrations with dancing came from the fact that most boys were total insecure duds about it and wouldn't even bother to learn the most basic steps or try the most basic hip-shake. Ugh. Whereas most girls will at least keep a beat. I often griped that boys had no idea how many girls they could get a chance to be close to if they were decent on a dance floor.
This extends far beyond HS. In many white straight clubs it's all women dancing and men hanging around awkwardly. I'm a dude who dances and it often seems a revelation to folks. I'm pretty tired of it tbh. Cmon dudes let's get it goin!
posted by wemayfreeze at 1:33 AM on April 29, 2016 [5 favorites]
This extends far beyond HS. In many white straight clubs it's all women dancing and men hanging around awkwardly. I'm a dude who dances and it often seems a revelation to folks. I'm pretty tired of it tbh. Cmon dudes let's get it goin!
posted by wemayfreeze at 1:33 AM on April 29, 2016 [5 favorites]
When I've run concerts at a hacker conference, I've insisted that all those whiteboynerds get their meatbodies on the dance floor and treat them like they matter as much as their 31337 hacking skills. Teaching them to hack their bodies -- basically, teaching the concept of isolations as they are always taught in dance classes -- seems like a revelation in these settings.
posted by gusandrews at 10:59 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by gusandrews at 10:59 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]
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