The fall weather finally settled in New England on this particular Friday night, as the dry leaves swirled in the brick nooks of the elementary school. There was a mix of warmth and coolness that seemed to ignite the fragrance of the earth, bringing to mind the night football games that I, and my girlfriends of long ago, attended. But on this eve a new generation kids streamed into the gym for the first “sock hop” of their lives and of the 4th grade school year. Parents lingered at the door, hesitating at the blast of music bellowing from the cavernous room, gesturing with hands covering their ears and rolling their eyes as if to say: “I can think of better things to do on a Friday night.”
My daughter, Rosie, had corrected me earlier in the day when I mentioned “the dance”. “It’s not a dance, Mom,” she declared.
“Ok then, what, ‘a get-together’?” I asked. That seemed to satisfy her. It was only later that I got wind that she and a best friend were supposed to have a “double date” with two boys, and it seemed that Rosie was just sort of going along with it. “Well, I can’t help it if Patrick likes me,” she said with a blush when I raised my brow at the revelation of this rendezvous.
Oh brother, I thought to myself. It’s really pretty harmless, but why on earth is the elementary school having socks hops? Isn’t that more appropriate for middle school? Of course, I had to look up the history of the phrase sock hop – albeit in a rather unacademic way. According to Wikipedia:
“Sock Hop is a term coined in the 1950s in the United States, following the growth in popularity of rock and roll, to refer to informal sponsored dances at American high schools, typically held on the grounds of the high school itself in the gymnasium or cafeteria. Music was often recorded, sometimes live.
Initially the term referred to the practice of removing one's shoes in order to dance in stocking feet, typically to spare the floor from the scuff marks of dress shoes.”
Did you notice the words, “high school” in that definition? A high school dance. And here we are 50 years later socializing our little boys and girls not yet 10 years old into a heterosexual pas de deux when most parents I know haven’t even talked about puberty, dating, or the dilemmas having two left feet.
Of course, the gym offered space for what was basically free-for-all group bouncing, sliding, sporadic line dancing formations, chicken dances, toilet paper mummy-wrapping and frequent, mostly unintentional body slams. Yes, pretty innocent. The boys hung together. The girls hung together. The gendered groups bobbed among each other like amoebas. Is there anybody in charge here other than the DJ? How about a line dance instructor?
The parents were the wallflowers at this sock hop, voyeurs of pre-pubertal mass confusion infused with a strange sense of parental curiosity. “Don’t you think this whole dance thing is a bit odd at this age?” I yelled above the cacophony to another mother.
“I thought the same thing,” she shouted back. “Fortunately, Mary could have cared less about what she wore, and is still in her school clothes.” “Yah, Rosie, too.” But there was this double date issue that was still lingering. I searched out the two boys with the help of a father sitting next to me. They were little guys. One was wearing a pink (yes, pink) dress shirt and had a buzz cut akin to Dennis the Menis. The other child, Rosie’s apparent admirer, was a cute chubby and freckled Irish kid in a baseball shirt. He was a least a head shorter than she.
When I was in fourth and fifth grades we had an annual square dance, and our father or mother was our date. It was a blast, being arm in arm and swung around by a bigger person, the centrifugal force and squeals of laughter evoking a natural high. The square dance caller, with a deep drawling voice, brought a sense of order to it all.
“Swing your partner dosey-doe.”
To those that think I’m being nostalgic or saccharine, be assured I’m hardly a throwback to more conservative eras. But there was something about that square dance that brought a sense of community and connection. The idea of partnering was meeting everybody along the way and laughing in the punch line about stepping on the math teacher’s toes, or bumping into the jiggly body of corpulent Mrs. D, the music teacher.
My parents were divorced (an unusual occurrence 30 years ago causing me a bit of personal shame) and so the year when I was 10 years old and my father brought me to the square dance, I thought I was so special. At the time girls wore dresses – often hand made; and boys wore ties. My Dad moved across the country the following year leaving the next square dance date to my uncle. My Dad was hardly to be seen except for court-mandated summer vacations. Of course, a different sort of innocence was lost then.
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