Fourth grade reprise

Blast from the past. We paid our money, got our tickets, walked onto the dance floor and we were back in fourth grade. The barn dance was everything I remembered about that PE unit: bow to your partner, bow to your corner, swing your partner, do si do! All I remembered, but better.

These days we do less swinging and do si do-ing. Exactly none, to be precise. We rarely experience the old brick, industrial loft feel of Everyday Joe’s Coffee House. Never before have we met up there with 15 friends and a whole lot of strangers for a Barn Dance complete with a professional caller and a live band of fiddles, banjos and mandolins.

In fourth grade, it was all piped in music from an 8-track player into the slick-floor sterile gym-cum-cafeteria that smelled of exercise mats and old food, and hesitant-but-required dancing with the cute boys and the cootie-covered ones alike.

And perhaps it was fourth grade the last time I laughed so hard I was repeatedly in danger of peeing my pants?

Everything about this night just cracked me up – the willingness of my husband and some good friends, far outside our normal context, enthusiastically learning and also screwing up dance moves with such gusto and playfulness – it was exactly the experience I had hoped for. Just flat out fun.

Every call seemed to hit our ears with a delay. There were murmurs of “Wait, what did she say?!” and then scrambling to keep up. Various swings that were meant to result in calculated hand offs went wildly awry. Some of us were sent spinning off into the stratosphere to find ourselves in other squares. Our missteps produced not only hilarious laughter, but also mismatched partners, stumbling, dizzy-drunk walking, poking, bumping and hasty apologies.

On the happy occasion when we did internalize a specific move we were loath to let it go. Even when we danced a completely different set of steps or were moving forward for 4 counts instead of 8, we still clapped when we were certain we’d learned to clap. (We were promptly reprimanded, “No clapping in this one!” which caused, you guessed it – more laughter.) We still chanted “How do you do?” and the required reply, “Fine, thank you!” when we were in a circle, even though that particular call and response was meant for a reel.

We all, even us “city folk,” essentially put on our Barn Dance personas when we walked in the door – remembering from 4th grade how to bow and curtsy, and use a twang-y accent to greet each other with a “howdy” – and spent the rest of the evening maxing them out. I personally got in touch with my inner cowgirl by skipping across the wooden dance floor, yelling “Yeeeee haaaaaw!” as I flew past people I knew, and stomping and clapping any time my feet and hands weren’t otherwise engaged.

Some of us are hooked. We’re researching and exchanging info about upcoming Barn Dances and preparing to invite anyone who cares to get past the seeming corniness of it to experience the fun. Some that couldn’t make it have heard the tales and are making me promise I’ll plan another.

I will. I’m already looking forward to it. And I’m considering how to get my cowgirl groove on in an even more pronounced way. A swingy skirt? Cowboy boots? Classic red bandana? Ah, yes, la piece de resistance: my old straw cowboy hat in the picture of me at the beach! Sadly, it’s long-since retired (to the trash) after years of love and affection. Maybe I can find another one to tip to my partner?

Or maybe I should save myself the trouble just make use of the tried and true square dance hairstyle: pigtails.

Nah, some (though not all) things are better left in fourth grade.