It Makes Me Feel Like Dancing!

I've been neglecting my blog because in November, I found Facebook. It ate my Christmas (I still have yet to send out my Christmas cards), and it consumes about an hour every day (conservatively.) Hey, living and working with my husband, side by side, every day, in a teeny, tiny house would make me go stir crazy if I didn't have any outside social contacts! Plus, it's cool to see all the people from my childhood and find out what they're up to now. (Yeah, I guess I'm one of those annoying 'old people' who have taken over the site, making it no longer hip.)

Anyway, about a month ago, I was tagged on a great note called "Me... according to my kids." The premise was to ask your child a bunch of questions about you and record what they said... unedited. I read the comments made by the much-younger kids of my friends, and I wondered what my teens would say. B participated, and I was floored by some of her answers.

One of my favorites was this:
If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?
"It will probably be for inventing the Vacation Dance - the most annoying dance on earth that parents can use as a secret weapon to embarrass their kids and scar them for life. Not just the vacation dance, several dances, so that you can embarrass them numerous times!"

While she said it with a half-smile, my daughter is known to be brutally honest, and she pulled no punches on that one. Even my niece (who is 22) has remarked on my random dancing. And I guess that these two comments together really made me step back and wonder if I really was becoming 'known' for this particular behavior, and whether that was a good thing or not.

Now, as a Glamour Pi, I try to 'be in the moment' and really feel any positive emotions without constraint. I've mentioned before how Al and I came up with the Vacation Song, and later, the Vacation Dance to go along with it. The rule regarding the Vacation Dance is that any time you're on vacation and say the words, "I'm on vacation", you must do the Vacation Dance - regardless of where you are and who is around. The premise here is to just let go of your inhibitions and have fun - because you're on vacation! I love it, and do it as often as I can. (It's a 'cabbage patch' done while singing our Vacation Song.)

I guess the practice of losing my inhibitions has spread, though, and I now have a dance for just about anything:

The Birthday Dance was born when Al and I went to Disneyland to celebrate our birthdays last year and found that housekeeping had decorated our rooms with balloons, chocolates, birthday hats and autographed pictures of the Disney Princesses.

This is Al, doing the Birthday Dance, and below is why she was doing it.

See how easy we are to please? We were screaming and giggling like tweens!

The Pretty Dance is a kind of waltz to "I Feel Pretty" from "West Side Story". This is usually done after a bit of pampering, such as a trip to the nail or hair salon.

And the Happy Dance, well, that's just something I do whenever there's something special to be happy about. It's usually accompanied by a "Woo Hoo!" or two. (Alas, no pics of either the Pretty Dance or the Happy Dance have yet been captured. This Silly Dance, which Al captured in Tahoe, is about as close as we've gotten so far.)


Last week, I found a new dance to add to my repertoire.

I was reading Wil Wheaton's blog and read this: "You like the stories. This makes me so happy I want to do the Snoopy dance."


I guess that's what my Happy Dance is, but the Snoopy Dance has a little jumping one-two-three foot action going instead of my stationary-foot hip-wagging version. The arms and hands are still the same. Oh, and for Snoopy, you have to add the head-up head-down thing to alternate with the jumpy one-two-three foot action. You'd have to see it to understand.

While that describes the physical aspect of the dance, I started thinking about the psychological aspect of it. I think Wil's reference to the Peanuts cartoons was the answer. These kids are just so darn full of happiness that they simply cannot physically contain it. The joy has bubbled up and over, spilling out of every pore. How amazing!

How wonderful would it be for all of us to embrace that kind of joy in our lives! It's like the way my great-nieces can occupy themselves laughing at nothing together. Or the way my cat can just go all crazy and go running around the house at top speed for no reason at all. As adults, we so often are the observers of such joy, but our 'dignity' prevents us from actually participating. As we watch, we smile and sigh, but why?

Why not join in? How freeing it can be to actually skip, just because it's fun! Maybe that's why I enjoy my great-nieces so much; because they give me the excuse to be so silly! I can skip around the zoo with impunity, as long as I have Care on my shoulders. But if I did it alone, people would assume I'm crazy. And how sad is that: to not do a thing that would bring us such joy, just because of what someone else would think. Is that the grown-up version of peer pressure? After all, it isn't like skipping is illegal or socially unacceptable for ethical reasons. It's "just not done." How very sad. In comparison, every day we see people who are angry or in bad moods - swearing, driving like jerks, stomping around with sullen faces. Why is it so much easier to repress the positive emotions? And isn't that far more damaging than trying to keep our tempers under control?

I say let's let the silliness out when we can. Embrace the joy and let it bubble over. Smile, laugh, give a complement. Spread the joy. Heck, in today's world, we sure could use it! Who knows, while I may not become famous for inventing the Vacation Dance, maybe I'll become famous for encouraging people to let their joy show. (Or, as my son develops his comedy routine, maybe I will become famous for inventing the Vacation Dance - as a part of his act! However, the parental power of embarrassment is the subject for another post.)

"Feel the Woo Saah! And embrace the joy!"