![]() ![]() No one had mentioned it but we had a family wedding to go to. After one rather raucous night of beer drinking, which my parents caught me doing, I awoke hungover to discover my grandparents had arrived. Somewhere during those early junior high years – and I’m not proud of this – my friends and I discovered the joys of drinking beer. I didn’t dance because I knew I couldn’t look cool doing it, not because I was a Baptist or anything weird. If you were as anti-disco as I was, it stands to reason that I’d be anti-dancing. You can never be sure about these things. I don’t know if that experience along with the horror of the 7th grade dance sealed my fate as a non-dancer or not. I was firmly with the rioters on that whole disco issue. It turned into a riot and the White Sox had to forfeit the game. Seventy-thousand people showed up to blow up disco records. I remember seeing on the news some DJ up in Chicago did a “Disco Destruction” night at Comiskey Park in 1979. There were guys walking around with “Death Before Disco” t-shirts on and back then, they meant it. As a rock and roller and an unsure pubescent boy I wanted to avoid anything that was uncool or worse feminine. The Bee Gees and Donna Summer ruled the world. It was during those Junior High years that I discovered rock and roll. The last time I peeked into he dance hall, the majority of my class was just walking in a circle clapping rhythmically. I hid in the game room most of the day playing foosball. Sure, they were enticing but we ran like we’d just escaped a chain gang. These Amazonian women – and make no mistake there was a huge difference between 13 and 15, these weren’t girls in our eyes, they were young women – started knifing into the crowd like dobermans chasing a shoplifter searching for 7th grade boys to drag onto the dance floor. When we all reached junior high at the ripe old age of thirteen, they paraded us all into the cafeteria, which had been cleared of all the dining tables, and announced it was “the 7th Grade Dance.” They’d brought in a few girls from the 9th grade to “get the party started” as they say. When I was growing up, 7th grade through 9th grade was split off as junior high school. Dancing, in public anyway, was never much of an issue for me until I reached the seventh grade. I’ll even admit the “unpopularity” part of it hits closer to home than I’d care to admit. Webster’s defines “wallflower” as “a person who from shyness or unpopularity remains on the sidelines of a social activity (such as a dance).” That pretty much describes me. The only thing I would describe myself as “phobic” about wasn’t even on the list… it’s dancing. They say that vertigo is really a fear you’ll jump rather than a fear you’ll fall which I find wonderfully dark. I get a twinge of vertigo when I’m up high. Actually, the number one thing people fear is heights. I’ve given speeches at work, wedding toasts and to date one eulogy in front of 100s of people. I do that all the time at work, well, I used to before becoming Boo Radley and hiding in my attic for a year. I know the Rock Chick and my daughter would rather be scalded with boiling oil than stand in front of a crowd of people and say something. I was always under the impression that public speaking was the most commonly cited fear. I saw an article on-line the other day about common phobias. “Just like you I’m wonderin’ what I’m doing here, just like you I’m wonderin’ what’s going on, wallflower, wallflower won’t you dance with me…” ![]()
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