Don't Dance, Mom!

The inability to stop dancing to one of the Paradise Boys' tracks led me to purchase their album, and once purchased, I danced to the whole disc, not just that one song. For several weeks, when hearing the energetic beat bounce out from my bedroom into the family home, my son would leave his room and stand outside to stare at me. Whilst I threw my arms and head about and bounced out to the beat, pounding the carpet below, he would stare with a mild frown.

My son is an actor at heart, and likes to portray various characters. He would put on his 'upper-class English gentlemen' act and frown down upon my relaxing enjoyment. "Mothers are not supposed to disco dance in their bedrooms," he would say, or "It is teenagers, not parents, that are supposed to enjoy dancing to bouncy music." Whatever his wording, it amused him somewhat to find me bopping about happily swaying and pounding to dance beats, whilst making the bedroom floorboards bend and creak. He would stick his nose in the air, standing straight and tall, pretending to be Sherlock Holmes or a character from Charles Dickens that 'did not approve' very highly of such happenings.

I simply keep dancing! If my son is old enough to make such opinions about the correctness of parental behavior, he is old enough to deal with having an unconventional parent. The rhythm of dance music just makes me move. This song is one he often stares at me whilst dancing to - perhaps because my movements are generally rather exaggerated as they incorporate lots of arm waving and backward bending. I do not think I will ever live down the day on which I bent so far backwards that I actually fell over. Luckily, my bed was behind me - but unluckily, my son was watching!