Just Dance

My husband and I were watching Footloose with our oldest daughter the other night, and, of course, we started dancing during the movie.  I showed my eldest all my really cool moves, and it didn't take long for her dad to join in (For the record, neither of us can actually dance.  We pretty much look like rabid monkeys when we try to bust a move.  Have fun imagining that.)

And, of course, my teenager joined in laughing and dancing with her mom and dad shouting: "This is so awesome!  You guys are so awesome!"

Not at all.  In reality my daughter was basically horrified.  She caught our dance on video for evidence, she says, of why she may or may not need to be adopted at a later time.  And she seems to enjoy sharing these videos.  She's so generous.

"Mom," she said after I had accidentally tripped over the bench and fallen on top of her, "you guys are just not normal."

And neither were my parents when I was a teenager, of course.  My parents were just, plain odd when I was in junior high.  Take my dad, for example, whose nickname for me was "Mongrel."  Yep.

"Hey, Mongrel!  Time for dinner."  So, this sort of command was common, and even somewhat affectionate coming from my dad, but while I heard, "Hey, Katie come and eat,"  my friends probably heard, "Hey, crossbreed!  Come get your feed."  It just wasn't a terribly conventional nickname, but I'll never forget it.  

And then there was my mom:  a woman who at the age of sixteen had the awesome opportunity to watch the completion of the St. Louis Arch.  With all the excitement in St. Louis at the time, she and a friend decided to attend the opening day at the arch.  When they arrived for the big event, the line to get in the doors was incredibly long.  Noticing that the handicap folks were allowed to go straight to the front of the line, my mom did what any normal person would do.  She acted like she was blind so she could jump to the front.

Duh.

Oh, yes she did.  I asked her on many occasions why a blind person would want to experience the sights from the top of the arch.  "Duh," she'd say.

Kidding, kidding....

Oh, mom.  She would just smile a conniving smile and remind us that she was one of the first people to enter the doors of the arch, and she held in every bit of "oooh" and "ahhh" whilst at the top.  Instead, she stared straight ahead with her friend guiding her along, both relishing in their bizarre accomplishment.

So, not much normalcy there either.  And definitely a story that even the grandkids have remembered through the years: "Tell us that story of when Ya Ya pretended like she couldn't see so that she could go up in the arch to see what it was like!"  Yep.

But this abnormal behavior goes back even farther.  When my parents were engaged, my mom's grandpa was anxious to meet the young beau who had taken my mom's heart.  So, my dad and great-grandpa met.  Mom introduced dad to her grandfather saying, "Grandpa, this is my future husband."  My grandfather, who could see clear as crystal, held out his hand and said, "Yes, well, I'm blind and can't see you." And my dad bought it.

Hook, line, and sinker. For the remainder of the night, healthy-eyes grandpa Witmer was blind as a bat as far as my dad knew.  And I'm pretty sure no one's ever going to forget that story.

But then there's also my husband, lest you think this uncharacteristic behavior is one sided.   In college he would dress up like gandhi.   Why, you wonder?  Well, because new students would visit the campus.

Duh.

And so he would greet new students dressed like this:

And then he would say in his gandhi accent:  "This is the flower of life.  This is the flower of death."  And it would look something like this:  

His college friends will still talk about gandhi when reminiscing about good old college days, and there's just not much more I need to say about that.  The pictures speak a thousand words.  Or create strange thoughts.  Or produce questions.  Or just leave you bewildered.  Something along those lines.   

Just this last week my husband and I had a proud parent moment while watching my son impersonate Napoleon Dynamite in front of his entire school.  Yes, that's right.  All in one sentence: proud parents and impersonating Napoleon Dynamite.  While each class prepared group lip syncs, Jrod approached us with the idea of doing the Napoleon Dynamite dance by himself, and all we could think was:  

Awesome.  

He spent hours learning from tutorials, chatting about his progress with friends from church, and he watched the dance over and over....and over again.  And then he did it.  My son danced a choreographed dance by himself, dressed up as the ultimate nerd, and while it was pretty unusual for an elementary school lip sync, it was pretty awesome.  

And really, this is something he'll remember forever.  It's probably something I'll remember forever, standing and clapping for this odd dance like a mother whose kid just won the Nobel prize. There's just something great about doing things a little uncharacteristically, living fully in the moment, and embracing the abnormal every once-in-a-while.  Dance.  Greet others like gandhi.  Wear a huge wig, moon boots, and bust a move.  Why not?  Have fun, enjoy this life we've been given, and make memories along the way.  Life's too short to only be normal all the time.  And I'm pretty sure my eldest daughter is starting to embrace this herself:   

  Cheers, my girl!  Mom has videos too....