With apologies to “Dirty Dancing”

MODERN DAD | By Jon Show

Jan. 10. There are some things in life I just don’t like to do that most people enjoy.

If I were a better person, I guess I would suck it up and do things I don’t enjoy. Maybe I’d make it a New Year’s resolution.

At the end of the day, I just don’t care. It’s my life. There are things I don’t like to do. You know what? I’m not going to do them.

While I’m not going to list all of them here (mostly due to space constraints), I will tell you about one thing I absolutely hate doing—perhaps the most.

Dancing.

It’s hard to express in words how much I despise dancing. Am I good at it? Absolutely not. I also have no desire to get better at it. I’m certainly not going to practice or study others to improve.

I think I’d still hate it if I were good at it, but since I’m terrible, we’ll never know.

The concept of dancing, to me, is insane as a social construct. People who love it are bewildered that others hate it. “It’s so much fun,” they say! Except it’s not.

I’ve thought long and hard about why I hate dancing, and I can’t even come up with a reason. I just hate it. Similar to how some people love mayo and others don’t, except mayo lovers don’t treat mayo haters as societal outcasts.

I’ll make an exception for slow dancing. I don’t mind that. It’s relatively easy, and it’s almost impossible to look ridiculous. I’m game for any song below 80 beats per minute, but no one has asked me to slow dance since my wedding.

Dirty dancing

There were large swaths of my life during which I begrudgingly danced, always in the hopes of finding a girlfriend.

In middle school, I stood in a circle with my friends, performing the worst dance moves in recorded history to songs like “Bust a Move” and “My Prerogative.” All the while, I prayed the DJ would play something like “When I See You Smile” so I could slow dance with a girl.

You know life isn’t going well when you’re relying on a Bad English song to spark a good moment.

At some point during every school dance, our DJ, Mr. Fernandez, would play “Dream On” by Aerosmith. I’d find myself slow dancing with a girl, only for the song to veer unpredictably between slow and fast. This left everyone awkwardly deciding whether to switch to an uncomfortable fast dance or persist with the slow dance that no longer matched the music.

For Mr. Fernandez’s final high school dance performance, he forgot to bring the album for Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You,” a rolling ballad that would have been the perfect closing slow dance for our senior prom.

Instead, he played “Stairway to Heaven,” forcing us to experience one last time the private hell of figuring out how to handle a song that shifts from slow to fast—with four, yes, four agonizing minutes still to go.

Saturday Night Fever

Things improved in college, only because most parties with a dance floor also had a bar, so there was something else to do besides being a wallflower. Music also changed in the mid-90s, and no one really knew how to dance to bands like Nirvana or the Gin Blossoms.

After college, we could choose where to go on a Friday night—a club or a bar—and I don’t once recall making a lucid decision to go to a club. As a bonus, the only dancing that happened in bars was done by drunk women on top of the bar, where dudes were definitely not welcome.

Coincidence or not, the only time I danced with someone where it actually worked out was with the woman I’d later call the Mother of Dragons.

The night I met her, I was sitting outside a wedding in Northern Georgia. She called me a name I can’t print here. Then, she asked me to do a tequila shot with her. I agreed, despite feeling quite bullied.

Immediately after the shot, she asked me to dance, and for probably the only time in my life, I agreed without consternation. It was, and remains, the only time in my life I’ve ever enjoyed dancing.

Four years later, on the night of our wedding, we slow-danced to a David Gray song. That song marked my official—and permanent—retirement from dancing. I had landed a wife. I was through.

Footloose

My refusal to dance occasionally comes up, and people are typically aghast—really oddly aghast—especially when my wife mentions that she loves to dance.

Whenever I’m backed into a corner about my hatred of dancing, I respond with the following story:

We were in a bar shortly after our wedding, during a time when I had decided—but had not yet told my wife—that I was officially done with dancing. She asked me to dance, and I declined. When she asked why, I paused long enough that it seemed like I was changing the subject, and then asked if she wanted to go fishing in the morning.

She replied with extreme prejudice, “I’m not going fishing; I hate fishing.” To which I responded, “Well, I hate dancing.” She went off to dance with her friends, and I stayed put.

I’m not a monster, so I’ve created one loophole for dancing: My kids’ weddings.

At these events, I will allow myself one slow dance with my daughter and one with my wife, to a predetermined song of mutual agreement. I will not dance to “Dream On.”

I will allow no more than two twirls per dance and will insist that each of them spin me around once, because the fact that men have to lead all the time is ridiculous. If men and women are equal, then I deserve to twirl too.

Each dance will conclude with a dip, executed (hopefully) well enough that neither of us ends up on the floor.

Then, in the tradition of a retiring Olympic wrestler, I will ceremoniously remove my shoes and leave them on the floor, never to be worn again.

Why? Because I also hate dress shoes—but that’s a topic for another day.

Jon Show lives in Robbins Park with his wife, who he calls “The Mother of Dragons.” Their 16-year-old son is “Future Man” and their 11-year-old daughter is “The Blonde Bomber.” Their dog is actually named Lightning.