I found myself remeniscing about New Years present and past as I sat at home while my wife and kids went to church today. I wrote this to a mailing list, but figured it would be worth it to post to my blog for, erm, posterity. Or whatever.
On Youth Stake Dances as a young Mormon kid
I was in the Washington, D.C. stake (later, the D.C. North Stake), and dances were really big events growing up. There was one thrown for New Years Eve where several stakes would get together and rent out an entire mall (it was Tyson’s Corner for several years, but then Tyson’s changed management and nixed it) to throw a huge gala. Those were great! I snuck into the first one at 13, with my older brother and my foster sister taking me. I was tall for my age, so I passed for 16 or so.
They had three live bands. On either end of the mall were the rock bands, one more electronic and one more traditional. In the very center was where the “old fart” music was playing, mostly jazz stuff.
And even the stake dances were over-attended. Entire gymnasiums filled with sweaty girls. It was heaven for a kid like me. I’d see a lot of the same friends every dance (never the ones in my own ward; I was too much of a dork for them to be friends with me), and we’d dance our butts off for hours on end, making a huge circle and changing partners constantly. The DJ would play “Rock Lobster”, and on the part where he would sing “Down, Down, Down!” the entire hall full of kids would fall to the floor on their backs and bang their feet as hard as they could on the floor, then jump up when the music started again and scream our heads off.
Good times. Apparently a parent got concerned about the laying down and the shouting, and we had a dance where “Rock Lobster” was banned. About forty of us kids showed up at the Stake President’s door, insisted it was all good fun and that it be reinstated. He backed down, having never observed it, and said they’d play it next dance.
And they did. And every dance afterwards.
On December 9,1991, I attended a tri-stake dance with a date. It wasn’t my home stake, but it was a dance, and really, that was all I cared about. I loved dances. The date stopped hanging out with me partway through the night, so I danced with a few other friends.
Midway through the night, a girl named Christy introduced herself to me, saying that she liked the way I danced and would like to reserve the next slow dance with me. I’d rarely been asked to dance, so I excitedly said yes and gave her a kiss on the cheek, promising to dance the next slow tune. It was a wonderful evening. We exchanged phone numbers and addresses, knowing that this was a huge dance and that we lived some 80 miles apart. We wrote a few times over the ensuing months, and in the spring when I returned from attending college, she dumped her prom date asked me to be her date to the prom on the night I returned.
Christy is now my wife of 11 years. We have four children together, and although we have our differences regarding many things, we’ve never been happier.