Tag Archive: dance

Gettin’ Low at a Middle School Dance

As much as I’ve gone out dancing in the past few years, at clubs like Blondie’s, Vertigo, and Double Dutch, I still felt apprehensive about attending a middle school dance. Since I didn’t learn to love freestyle dancing until college, I’d only been to one dance while at Altimira: the 8th grade graduation dance, where a shy Asian boy who’d had a crush on me asked me to dance to Mariah Carey’s “Hero.” (Was it really only 4 minutes, 23 seconds long? I think we must have danced to the extended remix.) This time, for the Halloween Dance, I wondered if I’d know anyone there. Neither of the girls I’d shadowed were going, only some of their friends whom I knew peripherally. I wondered if I’d have to be that creepy grown-up dancing alone, and if I could even dance “appropriately” to hip-hop without looking ridiculous.

I arrived late, after the doors had already been shut, sneaking in through the unlocked bathroom right before a teacher sealed it off. I had, however, already been granted free admission, not needing to buy a ticket at lunch like the rest of my classmates because I’d planned to chaperone for part of the time. Leadership teacher Mr. Ryan (a.k.a. Andrew, my classmate from Altimira who’d ended up teaching at the school) emailed me to share the guidelines to be enforced: “No PDA, hands where they are supposed to be, no leaving the dance then coming back in, no running, no making out!!!” He added, “Just kidding, I have never seen that here.”

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Not So Little Miss Popular

I never thought I’d get the chance to say it, but it’s true. I’m the most popular girl in my class. This is the first time I’ve ever had that experience, and you better believe that I’m loving it.

I wish that I could have known 20 years ago, when I was in 3rd grade, that one day I’d get a chance to be the girl that everyone paid attention to. At age 8, I was more teacher’s pet than social butterfly.  I was exceptionally tall for my age and had straight brown hair down to my waist. I wore headbands with little teeth that dug into my scalp, and I had to put on thick pink-framed glasses during class so I could see the blackboard. (We had actual blackboards, not white boards like the classrooms do now.) In one class photo — the kind with the futuristic “lasers” in the background — the huge puffed sleeves of my dress are uneven in height. (FYI, those are tack-marks on the photo, not pockmarks on my face.) In another photo, my bangs are slicked into what appears to be a cowlick combined with a comb-over, which is just about as attractive as it sounds.

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