I Used to Square Dance

Here's what I looked like when this story was taking place. Yeah... — Here’s what I looked like when this story was taking place. Yeah…

When I was about ten years old I took square dancing lessons.

I was homeschooled for most of elementary school and one of the other home school kid’s parents started a square dancing class.

I went to the first few lessons for free with a few other homeschool friends. Once we knew the basics we performed at a mall to try and attract other students.

I continued taking lessons after that, but my other friends stopped going. There weren’t a lot of replacements either. The mall performance ended up not panning out.

Often the lessons wouldn’t have enough people to form an eight person square. Even when we had enough people the girls always had to occasionally dance the men’s part (not that unusual for dance classes actually).

My mom kept taking me to the square dancing lessons for awhile. Thinking back on it now, part of the reason might’ve been because of the square dance teacher’s daughter.

We were about the same age and I can be fairly certain that she had a crush on me.

I think I would’ve felt the same way if I was into girls at that age, but I wasn’t yet.

I eventually told my mom that I wanted to stop going to the lessons. One of the other kids taking lessons there had really dry scaley skin and I didn’t like touching her skin when we danced because I thought I would catch leprosy from her or something.

Course I didn’t tell my mom that. I just told her that the time it took to drive to the lessons and back was about as long as the lessons took and I wasn’t really enjoying them.

My mom seemed a little bummed and I think it was because she’d wanted me to go on a date with the teacher’s daughter.

It’s probably for the best. The teacher’s daughter had curly hair and I’ve never liked curly hair. That relationship would’ve been even shorter than most middle school relationships (half a week instead of the usual week).

-Mister Ed