I am not a dancer. Now, behind closed doors, I'll dance with my little boy (he totally LOVES that) and I've been known to slow dance and even two-step, though a bit awkwardly, in public with my husband. But beyond that, you won't catch me on the dance floor. I don't have two left feet--I have three.
I didn't go to dances when I was in school--not Howdy dances or Homecoming dances or Christmas dances or anything. In fact, I didn't even go to my prom. I'm sure some of you just gasped in horror, but I honestly don't feel as though I missed a thing. I never had a date, and since I couldn't cut a rug with anything but scissors, I saw no point in paying good money to go to a dance by myself just to stand around and hold up the wall. No point at all.
I went to Oklahoma Baptist University during my college years, and being a Baptist college, they didn't have dances on campus--heaven forbid--because (didn't you know?) there is actually an 11th commandment and it is "Thou shalt not dance." They also didn't have what most colleges call sororities and fraternities either. They had what they called "service groups." Don't let the euphemism fool you though. They were very much still sororities and fraternities. Now, OBU would allow these service groups to sponsor dances off-campus, but they still couldn't call them "dances" because if they did, some of the trustees might stroke out and die. So, they called them "functions" which was actually short for "foot functions." Many of these functions were very casual get-togethers, open to all students, and not some formal affair (although they had those, too).
In keeping with my previous record, I arrived at my senior year of college having never attended even one of those functions. That is, until I saw a sign advertising that the Lambdas were hosting a function at the roller rink there in town. Now I had not been rollerskating in ages, and had many fond memories of doing so as a kid, and I thought that it might be very fun to go, and to get my roommates to go with me. I went back to my apartment and talked it up to my three roomies, and they got excited about it too. We all made plans to go together, and started really looking forward to having something to do on the weekend.
So, the big night came and we got ready to go. My roommate Tammy even had her own rollerskates and she brought them along so she wouldn't have to rent a pair at the rink. We pulled into the parking lot and got out, Tammy with her skates in tow. As we approached the door, the guy who was taking money for the event took one look at Tammy with her skates and said incredulously, "What are those?" Tammy said, "I brought my own skates." Then he said with a smirk, "You're not going to be needing those in there." At that moment, it dawned on the rest of us that there was not going to be any skating at that function. Only fuctioning. They just happened to be using the roller rink as a dance floor. How could we have been so stupid? Unfortunately, it didn't dawn on Tammy quite that quickly and she began arguing with the guy about why she couldn't use her own skates. Even though we really wanted to pretend that we didn't know her, we quickly ushered Tammy away and back to the car to put up her skates, explaining the situation to her as we went. At that point, we all felt really idiotic, but we decided to go on in and stay for awhile anyway, even though we were embarrassed about the misunderstanding, and disappointed about the skating. It actually ended up not being so bad. I tried to learn the Electric Slide and some other crazy line dance, but it was useless. Mostly I sat and watched everyone else. At least I had company.
So, at least I can say that I went to a function before my college days were over. Of course, I made an idiot of myself before I even set foot on the dance floor. Ain't that a trip?
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