The Anti-Aphrodisiac That Is Square Dancing (mp3s)

Lord, I feel like an old man right now. 

I'm not sure what gym class meant in other the other parts of the country but in suburban Rochester, NY in the mid-70's when you weren't playing "Kill The Queer" (aka: dodgeball), shuffling through Robert Preston's Chicken Fat or wondering what that funny feeling meant when you were climbing the massive, knotted rope, it meant square dancing.

Yes.  Square dancing.

Like Lynyrd Skynyrd, I don't mean to to put it down but I wish my gym teacher had remembered that a western New York state boy didn't need it around.  Anyhow, back then, awkward barely, pubescent kids, barely able to look at the opposite sex, suffered even more humiliation at the hands of jack-booted gym teachers everywhere by not only dancing with them, but square-dancing with them.

Square dancing.

I'm sure there are parts of the country where happy little worker ants scurry to and fro, honoring their partner and ecstatically forming stars and other geometric shapes but like ice dancing, I just don't get it. Who came up with it?  And why?  Isn't the whole point of dancing about getting laid?  Dancing is foreplay - how does your partner touch you, do they move well and, if you score, will they stalk you when you don't call them the next day.  In contrast, square dancing is like asking your potential sexy-time mate to help you move into your new apartment.

Watch that molding on the door
Lug that couch across the floor
Whaddya think you wanna fuck?
Gotta return that Ryder truck

You get my point.  No matter how much I stare at the cover of the album it speaks not a word of "square dance" to me.  In fact, there's a case to be made that the cute cowboy couple are actually a cowboy god and goddess staring down and laughing at the bunch of pimply teens engaged in avoiding eye contact and do-si-do'ing.  "Suckers!"

I present, then, for your non-sexy-time-having enjoyment, the utilitarian-named Square Dances With Calls.  The main pleasure I get from this comes from imagining the only Jewish square dance caller in New Jersey getting the nod to do his first album.

Perhaps it's my snotty, Boston-bias shining through, but I don't see any need to split up the sides into track lists.  Does anyone really have a favorite square dance song?  "OOOH! Duck For The Oyster!  I LOVE that one!"

And thanks to the lack of any kind of editorial interference, I can add the line "I don't know much about square dancing, but I know it when I see it."

Square Dance Side 1

Square Dance Side 2

Comments

[Tommy]

This subjected us to this in suburban Minneapolis/St. Paul, too.

I didn't mind. It was a chance to actually touch some tender feminine flesh, even if only their hands.

I was good at math and would calculate the best initial position to maximize the number of times I got to touch Susan M.

[bartelby]

I worked in an academic library which had not one but two square dancing journals on the periodical shelves. We used to speculate that some long forgotten professor insisted that the library subscribe.

[zom]

i thought i was alone growing up in West Green Georgia having to square dance in gym class. i remember the teacher smacking my friend once (it was a different time- a time of legal paddling) who repeatedly couldn't keep his place in formation. i remember always being stuck with what i thought was the foulest girl in school (who probably grew up to be super hot, btw) and us all basically being afraid to touch- yet being forced to pair up and touch. such a social experiment. and the gym teacher seemed to take glee in the little arranged marriages he performed. he was eventually accused of molesting some girls too, but was only asked to resign under the suspicion

so wow, thanks for the memories! long story short i hated gym squaredance- yee haw!

[zom]

just listened to the tracks. how was any of that supposed to make sense to a kid? it was just as fast and confusing as i remember. god, the stress- THE STRESS! we were an unorganized tangle of frightened children, always two or three moves behind the announcer, panicked and frightened of the hare-lipped mustachioed teacher who tapped his cowboy boots (yeah- he ALWAYS wore boots- never gym shoes. ever. some gym teacher!) he was the gym teacher of our little school and tiny town by default because he had once played H.S football or something.

(apologies if i accidentally posted this twice under an alias)

[Rich]

At least when rock n' roll came out, someone was slick enough to slow it down and make it a lot more sexy with the dance we called, "The Stroll"!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4Z4k6edoBM

Rich

[Aaron White]

I was a shy boy from Signal Mountain, TN, and the annual square dance at our church's summer camp was my only chance to hold hands with all the cute girls and women I'd spent the rest of the year staring at. It probably helped that it was in a late-night social fun atmosphere rather than a school setting. Plus I actually enjoyed dancing with old folks, little kids, the whole gamut of the church's society. Kind of a community bonding thing. We all enjoyed it so much that we didn't mind that the square dance caller always insisted on ending the night by putting on a big blond wig and gesticulating dramatically to a recording of The Lord's Prayer.

[Brian C.]

I also grew up in WNY in the mid 70s. 4th grade gym class was my first square dancing experience, but I stupidly wouldn't pick a partner--boys did the picking, or course--so I also got stuck with the least desirable girl. Later, in high school, we still had to square dance, but it wasn't quite as bad, as girls were no longer icky. But the real highlight was Coach Cluchey frisbeeing a record that was skipping into the gym wall. And square dancing beat learning the Bus Stop & LA Walk. Being firmly entrenched into the "disco sucks" camp, THAT was torture.

My parents belonged to a social square dancing group (real small town, nothing to do!)--out at the firemen's exempt hall, which was an old church. Between sets the kids would go down to the basement and watch TV (Hee Haw, natch). The highlight here was the bar area--occasionally the kegs were still connected to the taps. So we'd fill up our Pepsi cans with Genny Cream Ale, and get even more hammered than the adults. Maybe it was the beer, but those fat, old time callers and their bands were pretty cool.

Now alamand left to your corner, right hand to your own--grand right & left around the hall, swing when you get home… I'll probably take those lyrics to the grave with me.

[Ivy]

We had square dancing too in PE class, in Miami. Square dancing must have been very popular with PE teachers in the 70s. It wasn't my favorite thing in PE, but it was miles better than flag football.

My husband's parents used to go square dancing here in England. Why anyone in the UK would be interested in square dancing is beyond me, but there you go.

My parents told me that they do square dancing when they spend the summer in North Carolina. My father does the dancing and my mother sits and watches. I have no idea why she won't join in in the dancing- square dancing isn't that difficult on the joints, and she's happy walking around malls.

[doomsday fartshadow]

methinks square dancing must have been a roundabout way of initiating swinging with middle aged couples in the 70's. reading these stories about kids going down in the basement while parents cranked up the square dance album upstairs and made a bunch of noise.... swing your parter INDEED.

[Scott Mercer]

I forget which stand up comic called it out: white people are so awful at dancing that they actually need a guy on p.a. system calling out the moves! (actually was probably a white comic that said that...)

[Mike]

Old Bethpage Grade School on Long Island, NY, too punished its 4th Graders with the confounding folk dance. Maybe becuase we were just down the road from the Restoration Village...