How I Learned to Dance

St. Joseph St. Thomas is a small church built in the 1960’s. Little thought was given to the appearance of the building, so the basement where we went every Thursday night for Teen Center was dark, dank, and kept all of us cool during the heat of summer. The basement had no windows and an unusually low ceiling which made the spinning disco ball an obstacle to be negotiated as you made your way around the dance floor.

It was 1979 and I was a 14-year-old rock-n-roller. I loved Led Zeppelin, the Who, and the Rolling Stones; and absolutely hated Disco. But then there were the girls. Evelyn “Champaign King”, Michael Jackson, Abba, the Bee Gees and Donna Summer – the Queen of Disco - were the soundtrack to the life of nearly every teenage girl in the neighborhood. No doubt about it, if you were hoping to get close to the girls, you had to know how to dance.

Maura Carlock was probably one of the plainest girls that came to Teen Center every week, but to this teenage boy she was the stuff that dreams are made of. For one week in 1979, I put away my guitar, exchanged my concert t-shirts for polyester, and got a haircut like John Travolta. In a word, my dancing was horrible. It was so bad; the disco ball practically fell from the ceiling. My friends had a great time laughing at me, but when the dance ended I got to walk Maura home. For that five minute walk, I was Tony Manero. No longer the spastic teenager in polyester under the dangerously low spinning Disco ball, I held Maura’s hand as we walked to her door.

The polyester pants went into the trash the next morning, and Born to Run was back in my cassette player. But for one week I was a dancing fool, and for one night I got to hold a girl’s hand and walk her home. Life was perfect – that was one heck of a dance lesson.