We’re going to a wedding, we’re going to a wedding, yippee, kaiyo kaiyay! I get to stay up late, drink, dance….
Wait…..wait a sec…..I gotta stop laughing….whew, ok, I’m back. I should have said ”drink, watch my husband dance…”
I can’t dance, not with a person anyway. Thinking about it brings back long suppressed memories of my older sister teaching me how to dance in the early 60’s.
Picture this – winter, the tiny kitchen of a little Cape Cod house, me and my big sister clearing up after dinner. It’s very dark, only a night-light on because my parents hated light. And that’s a strange sentence when I re-read it, “my parents hated light”. Remember a few years ago when “going toward the light” became a euphemism for dying? If I told either of my parents to “go toward the light” when they were dying, I swear they’d still be alive.
Mom: “Tom, get her away from me or I’ll kill her dead”.
Tom: “Go towards what light? Whadda ya try’n to be? Funny?”.
Ah, I digress. So, Sister’s got the transistor radio on and her hands in the sink, I got my ballerinas on (3 bucks, Macy’s) and I’m doing the cha-cha with the fridge door… forward - 1,2 chachacha, door closes, backward - 1,2 chachacha, door opens. Singing my heart out, “Louie Looaay, ohhh no I sayah we gotta go, ai ai ai ai ai ai” in my little helium-sucking voice. And in walks Tom. I guess the light from the fridge flashing on and off grabbed his attention as he walked to or from the liquor cabinet/linen closet. All hell broke loose. Sister was doing the dishes so wrong, “what the hell’s the matter with ya, ya wash pots first ‘cause the water’s hot, then dishes, then silverware, whadda ya, stupid?” And don’t even start on poor little me! “Whadda ya think? Yer cute? Leave the goddam door closed, I’m cooling the whole goddam neighborhood now?”
Then and there my muscles decided never to dance again.
There’s video proof of my inability to make
my body move in a rhythmic manner. At my
son’s wedding 30 odd years after the traumatic Louie Looaay episode, the DJ played “YMCA”. God I love that song; I am so stuck in the
70’s. And in the video there’s Sister
and me, far away from the crowd of dancing Village People, standing stock
still, only our arms moving, nothing else, and if you look carefully, I’m
spelling …..M..A..C..Y.
I don’t care! We’re
going to a wedding!
