Show Off

A few weeks ago I skipped the Study Days right before Exams to go to the NE Girl Jam up in Rochester.  I had an utterly lovely time not only dancing, but completely ignoring my impending finals.  It was great.  I learned a lot, not only in the Class of Five Million Swivels (the girls were doing them in lines across the floor while the guys made jokes about zombie swivels), but in all the classes.  I came away with lots and lots of ways to dress up my Lindy basic, some killer Solo Jazz moves, and a few good reminders about basic Lindy frame technique (information which, ironically, I first learned in a Westie workshop).  Since I came home, however, opportunities to put my new skills into practice haven’t been as abundant as I would wish.  It’s been a little sad.  Here I am wanting to glitter, to shine, to show off all the cool new things I know, and my leads haven’t really been giving me the chance.

Then last night I danced with Pierce.  He’s not a hugely imaginative lead, although he has nice connection and is learning how to hit the breaks.   Also, he lets me have room to play, which I appreciate.  He’s still learning, so he doesn’t have a lot of moves he can lead comfortably.  This means we ended up doing a lot of Lindy basics.  I loved this.  I got to go through pretty much every variation I learned at Girl Jam - the six different kinds of swivels including the backwards swivel, the kicky 6-8 variation, the ronde’s, plus my favorite slides.  It was wonderful, particularly since it was a bouncy, bluesy song just made for swivels.  I even hit a thing in the music dead on with this leg variation on the 7-8.  I was in heaven.  Pierce liked it too, making appreciative noises, and giving me a big hug when we were done.

As I was leaving the floor, Trevor came up, one of the young college kids I’ve been nurturing along.  “Wow, Bernadette!” he said, “You were tearin’ it up!” I laughed, and accepted the compliment.  Then he asked me to dance.  I had hoped that I would be able to throw in some of my fun stuff since he had particularly liked it, but this time it didn’t really happen.  Part of it was that he doesn’t know how to give me the connection I need to make a lot of those moves work, but the other part was that he hardly led a single Lindy basic the entire dance.  He was leading turn after turn, the same four or five turns that make up his basic repertoire.  Plus, like a lot of newer leads, he sometimes didn’t let me stay out for the whole eight count of the move.  I think they get nervous when the girl’s out there away from them, and pull her in early, making the 1 on 7 or 8, or even 6.  So in order to be ready to do whatever he was going to lead, I had to let most of my stuff go.

Later Trevor and I were talking about his dancing.  He has plans to work hard on it this summer in order to wow the rest of the swing club when everyone comes back in August.  He said that he’s especially frustrated because he doesn’t know very many moves.  He feels like it must be boring to dance with him because he doesn’t know very much.  We discussed a few ways he could learn more moves and combinations (taking the Wednesday night lessons, coming to Practice Session on Sunday, seeing something cool on the dance floor and asking the lead who did it to explain it on the sidelines), and then moved on to other topics.

Later I was thinking about what he said.  His complaint is very common with a lot of beginning guys.  They get bored with the same four or five turns, and want to learn more moves.  They want to expand their dance vocabulary, and sometimes develop insecurity complexes about girls getting bored dancing with them.  Part of the answer really is to learn more moves, but part of it is also getting over themselves.  Yes, only knowing a few moves can be boring, but only if the dance is really all about the lead.  The dance in general is very lead-centered, but I think guys get fixated on the idea that they’re the only one who can make the dance fun.  They’re the ones who have to lead cool stuff, they’re the ones who have to listen to the music, they’re the one who has to show off what an awesome dancer they are.  They forget that there’s someone else out there on the dance floor with them, someone who is equally capable of listening to the music, someone who could maybe take those three or four moves and turn them into something spectacular… if they get the chance.  When the lead thinks the dance is all about him, he’s not dancing with his partner, he’s just showing off.  (What makes it worse is when he’s not even showing off for the person he’s dancing with, but for someone else on the sidelines, or for the imaginary audience in his head.)  And that’s when it’s boring.

 

What I Did For Love

One of my favorite people in the entire world is my cousin Eric. He’s smart, funny, and not afraid to express his unique personality in whatever way strikes his personality. He often uses his wardrobe, owning such varied garments as a white linen Southern Gentleman’s suit, a camouflage kilt (which is one of his garments of choice to wear around the yuppie-wannabe, Abercrombie & Fitch wearing campus of the university we both attended until he graduated last December). I enjoy him very much, particularly for the wonderfully responsive way he listens to my stories about my life. We used to run into each other in the dining hall around lunch time on a semi-regular basis. He’d eat his pizza, and I’d tell him stories. The very best part was when I would time the delivery of a particularly outrageous line just right, causing him to erupt into laughter mid-swallow, almost choking himself, and occasionally spraying pizza shreds all over himself. It was pretty awesome.

The other very cool thing about Eric is that he has the very good taste to be completely gooey-eyed over my roommate Liv. This is not uncommon among my male relatives. However, Eric has been gooey-eyed for longer, more consistently, and with more restraint than any of the others. He first met her a year ago last December. I was bringing Liv back from getting a spinal tap, a particularly unpleasant procedure with long-lasting, thoroughly obnoxious side-effects. I had a lunch date with Eric, things at the doctor’s had taken longer than we expected, so I was picking him up before I took Liv home. At the time Liv was huddled in the back seat of the car, hiding underneath blankets, working on a really nasty spinal headache (which would eventually send her to the ER), and trying hard not to puke. Eric told me later that she was so beautiful his mind completely stopped working for a few minutes. You can’t tell me that’s not love.

The flaw in all this loveliness is Liv. She’s been through a rough couple of years. There was the skiing injury that, improperly treated, changed her from a marathon-running, swing-dancing, four-hours-of-sleep-a-night ball of energy into the girl in the wheelchair who has to be home in bed by ten o’clock or else she’ll fall asleep where she sits. There was the boyfriend who took her skiing in the first place, and then dumped her while she was in the hospital. There was the total career change when her injury forced her to switch from being a well-paid Air Force Officer to not-paid-at-all grad student, plus the stress when the people in the biology department where she enrolled to pursue her doctorate were, shall we say, less than sympathetic to her disability and tried to kick her out. And then there was the house she bought, planning to renovate it herself, right before her legs stopped working completely. Even if she’d been at all interested in starting a new relationship in the midst of all this, she wouldn’t have had the time or emotional energy to spare. Plus, things with the previous boyfriend had hurt her enough that she’s been wary around all guys ever since. All that being said, the case for Eric’s future happiness with Liv looks pretty bleak.

On the other hand, up until a few weeks ago, things looked cautiously promising. Liv likes Eric a lot. I don’t think she’s made the jump to Liking him, but in my opinion, she’s teetering on the brink. She enjoys him very much, is playful with him in a way I don’t see her be playful with anyone else, has extended conversations with him whenever they meet, and keeps suggesting opportunities to spend more time with him. Liv is not the kind of person you can push into much of anything, so I was playing it cool, agreeing with any positive remark she might say about Eric, and playing along with her suggestions to have him spend more time with us. When he was around I would quietly sit back and pretend that nothing unusual was happening at all, no matter how much she seemed to be flirting with him. Little by little, I thought, as long as Liv doesn’t get freaked out by something and stop in her tracks, we’ll get somewhere with this.

And then Damon came in to town. Damon, who wouldn’t know subtlety if it bit him on the butt, Damon who has no patience or ability to simply sit back and let things develop, Damon who loves his friends and wants to have all of them securely in safe little niches while he’s not around. The niche he’s created for me is Joe. He wanted one for Liv too, or maybe Eric. Whichever person he thought he was helping, the end result is the same. Somehow he got wind of Eric’s incorrigible gooey-eyes, and decided to do something about it. Which he did. He came over to the house ostensibly to visit me, and in the course of conversation informed Liv that Eric is completely nuts about her and has been for some time. He also strongly suggested that, since Eric is a fabulous human being who has gotten the impression that there is no hope for him, Liv should Do Something about this. He suggested certain courses of action which would satisfy him, most of which seemed to involve Liv grabbing Eric and demonstrating physical affection of one kind or another.

Yeah.

Liv seemed to take this fairly well. At least she didn’t inform Damon where he could put his suggestions, which seemed like fairly heroic restraint to me. However, in the next few days I realized that she had stopped mentioning Eric at all. We had some tentative plans to celebrate her graduation with a select group of friends, which included Eric (Liv’s suggestions). She stopped talking about these plans entirely, and ducked the topic whenever I brought it up. Finally I asked her straight out whether her ducking had anything to do with feeling uncomfortable around Eric. She said that it might have something to do with that. Things were looking a little bleak. I though black thoughts about Damon, and left Liv delicately alone.

Then Eric came to the Theology on Tap end of the season party. Liv and I were hosting it this time around. I had invited him, since I like spending time with my cousin, and somehow forgotten to tell Liv. Eric had a wedding on Saturday, so it didn’t look he could come after all. Then he came.

Let’s just say that it was an interesting evening. I got to put all my non-interfering skills to good use! After the initial shyness, Liv warmed up to Eric more and more. There were conversations and teasing, and cuteness of all kinds. I have to admire Eric’s restraint as well, letting Liv set her own comfort level. She kept seeking him out, they would talk a little while, and then she would head off somewhere else. Then she’d come back, they’d talk a little more, and the pattern would repeat. As the evening wore on, the talks got longer and longer. I smiled and refrained from commenting. And then, Liv’s standard modus operandi with parties is to stay up as long as she can, and then quietly abscond to bed around 10:30 or 11:00, leaving me to take care of things until people leave. Not with this party. She stayed up until 2am. I kept looking at her, thinking that she would be heading for the steps at any moment. But she didn’t. As long as Eric was there, she was downstairs.

And she did all this while knowing that Eric is in love with her.

Towards the end of the party, I was on the front porch talking with friends. Eric was out there with us until he realized that Liv was by herself inside. He quietly got up with a grin on his face and disappeared inside. I watched him go inside, and set myself to wait. It was a bit cold Saturday night, and I didn’t have a sweater. When I started shivering, my friends suggested that we go in. I said no, explained a little about the situation, and said that I intended to stay out there as long as I could. From my seat on the porch I could see the bottom of the steps through the open door. As we talked I watched it, waiting to see if Liv would head up. An hour passed, then an hour and a half. We stayed out on the porch. Then the wind kicked up. I crept silently into the house to retrieve sweaters and a blanket for myself and my friends from my room. Liv and Eric, laughing in the kitchen, didn’t hear. At the two hour mark we decided that we’d been forbearing enough, and went inside anyway. At that point Liv finally headed upstairs, and my friends headed out. Eric stayed for a little while to do a post-mortem, but I was having a hard time getting warm again after my chill. Before too long I shoved him out the door so I could take sanctuary in a hot shower.

Two hour out in the cold with shivers, and hypothermia. And I know this is just the beginning. They better name a child after me.

 

Two Kinds

In my experience as a Leader and Coordinator of Various Activities (several years of local Theology On Tap, coordinating traveling retreat teams, planning large parties/wedding receptions), I have encountered two kinds of helpers who are distinctly unhelpful. By helpers I mean those who actually do help in some way, not those who promise to help but never do, or those who show up only to goof off and distract others. Those are not helpers but blatant annoyances. However, there are two kinds of actual helpers who are each annoying in their own special way.

The first kind is the helper who has their own ideas. They are enthusiastic, eager, and willing to work themselves practically to death. Unfortunately, what they’re working on is what they think is important, not what you actually asked them to do. It’s intensely frustrating watching all that energy being wasted on projects and plans that are, in the end, unnecessary or counterproductive to the ultimate goal. Moreover, now others who cannot be spared have to be assigned to the projects and assignments which they chose to ignore. Then they want recognition and applause for all their hard work and effort, regardless of the fact that they have made more work than they have done. This is enough to turn any leader’s hair gray. I attribute the presence of more than one actually white hairs on my own head partially to dealing with persons like this.

The second kind is the helper who is only willing to do precisely what they have been asked to do, nothing more, nothing less. For instance, if this person is asked to bring his laptop to Theology On Tap in order to record the speakers, he is quite happy to do this. He will reliably bring his laptop, hook it up, and record the talk. Having done this, he then retreats to a table with his friends and happily ignores the other members of the Leadership Team as they set up the display table, pass out name tags, distribute index cards for audience questions, evaluation forms, etc. Afterwards, he does not seem to see the same people packing everything up and hauling heavy sound equipment out to cars. It does not occur to him that he might want to pitch in with any of this. If anyone should ask him to, say, clean up the display table, he will comply, but reluctantly. He brought his laptop, after all. Isn’t asking anything else of him a bit, well, much? If you should reproach him for not doing more, he defends himself by saying that he did everything that he was asked to do.

“Now, Bernadette,” you might say, “Aren’t you being a little impossible to please? First you complain about people who use too much initiative, and then you complain about people with none. Make up your mind!” However, I don’t think it’s too much to expect those who have volunteered for a job to take some direction on what to do. Moreover, once you’ve been through the process of a recurring event like Theology On Tap, it is reasonable to expect that you know roughly what needs to happen. You should be able to look around, see what needs aren’t being met, and take action to fill them. Plus, there is a basic level of care that you should be able to expect from other members of the same team. One team member should not be sitting on his duff while another works themselves to a frazzle. That’s not right, and there’s no defense for it.

The upside is that sometimes those with no initiative can be educated about their leader’s expectations, and can with time rise to a higher level of service. Those who refuse to take direction, however, tend to be incorrigible. There’s nothing you can say to them. In their mind their course of action was so obviously right that they had no choice but to follow it. They don’t understand what you’re making a fuss about. Given another opportunity, they’ll do exactly the same thing. Once these people are identified, the best option is to assign them simple, unnecessary tasks which can be safely abandoned when they go haring off on their own ideas.

Guess which variety of unhelpful helpers I’m dealing with this week!

 

Birthday Drama

So I had a birthday last week.  In the swing dancing community it’s a tradition that when a dancer has a birthday you give them a Birthday Jam.  This is a kind of exhibition dance in which the birthday girl starts out dancing with one guy in the center of a large circle of the other dancers.  As the song plays, the other guys present take turns stealing her.  If it’s a birthday boy, then the girls take turns stealing him.  I, in particular, always seem to have very interesting birthday jams.  They’re good fun, and can be the source of a lot of hilarity and/or showing off.  Showy steals, flashy moves - who knows what will show up?

This year my family showed up.  Well, half of them (I am one of eleven siblings).  It was Dad, Larry, Michelle, Heather, Lisa, and Gabe.  Liv was the Mastermind who got everyone there.  This was a big deal.  My family has never come out to see me dance.  When I was in my first competition, Liv came to cheer me on, but my family didn’t even ask me how I’d done.  Just the week before I’d been whining about this.  Trey’s family came all the way from Maine to watch him dance.  My family couldn’t go across town?

And then they showed up at the regular Wednesday night dance.  I had no idea, not the shadow of a suspicion, nothing.  I had dropped the swing club kids off early for the lesson (it was Shim Sham, which I already know how to do), and gone to chill at Barnes & Noble until the dance would start.  Of course I got caught in a book, so I was late to the dance.  I walked in, and there they were.  I was utterly flabbergasted.  It was awesome.  What made it even more awesome is that both Dad and Gabe jumped in during my birthday jam.  Gabe did a little swing dancing a few years back, so he sortof knew what he was doing, but my Dad had absolutely no clue.  He was so cute.  His idea of dancing was bouncing very energetically opposite me.  I thought, “Well, ok.” and turned it into a kicky-Charleston sort of thing.  Then he ran out of breath (my Dad bears a striking resemblance to Santa Clause, complete with white beard and rosy cheeks) and called for someone to rescue him.  It was so much fun.

With all this love, I don’t mind being another year older.

 

If You Don’t Know Me By Now

Today is Damon’s birthday, so around noon I called him up to sing him Happy Birthday.  I also wanted to know what his plans were - I had an idea that perhaps we might get together at some point today.  We established that he had other plans for dinner, so I thought that was that.  Then he asked me whether I was going to come to youth group.  I looked at the phone as if it were crazy and said, “Um, no.”  Undiscouraged, he asked me if I were going to come to a local restaurant where they have karaoke after youth group was done.  Again I said no. Bear in mind that this was the first time he had even hinted to me that plans like this were being made.  Things got even odder.  Damon then proceeded to act surprised that I wasn’t doing these things, and tried to lay a small guilt trip on me for not participating.  I didn’t permit this, and hung up with a sour taste in my mouth.

The thing is that every Wednesday night for the last two and a half years, almost as long as Damon has known me, I have gone swing dancing.  That’s what I do.  The only exceptions are if I am not in town or am extremely ill.  This isn’t just self indulgence, I have responsibilities.  This month I’m teaching Swing I, and this week is my week to run the desk.  Moreover, I have about a dozen college kids who are relying on me for transportation.  Damon knows all this.  I’ve told him at length about my adventures teaching, about helping out the swing club kids, and how much all this means to me.  Maybe he wasn’t actually listening to me (always a possibility).  Even so, the fact is that for the last two years, Wednesday has meant swing dancing.  Why would he think I would be doing anything else?

This is also the week before finals.  Everyone understands the stress of exams, but the truth is that the week before is worse.  A test is a test, but the papers and missing assignments and projects that have to be turned in at the last minute are something completely else.  I barely have time to think these days, plus I foolishly made plans months ago to go out of town this weekend and I can’t back out without mortally offending two very dear friends.  I won’t be able to think about anything but school until the first week of May.

The problem is that Liv isn’t in the same place I am.  She’s done with her school, her master’s thesis turned in and approved, nothing more to do.  She’s taken a little time to rest, and now she’s starting to think about all the household projects she let slide while she was finishing up her school.  Unfortunately, while she’s thinking about the house, she’s also thinking about all the things that I could be doing on the house too, pressing me for dates for when the cookbook shelves will be painted, when I’m going to cut the grass, all kinds of things.  She doesn’t mean to be pressuring me, but when she’s so focused on something it’s hard for her to realize that others don’t have the same priorities.  Still, she should know that this is not the time to be asking me to do anything extra.

Don’t these people know me?