Dancing like everyone's watching

Watching white people try not to dance was the highlight of a very eventful few weeks.

Apparently I am only three degrees away from hip (..ster that is.) See, I know guy who knows a girl who knew a girl that works at a new venue. Anyway, my first "club" opening in NYC was a very fun experience, especially the part where I got to watch (and not so secretly) laugh at a bunch of uptight temporary liberals who don't all need glasses but all wear them, stand very still during a more than decent rock show. There they stood, distressed leather shoes planted concretely on the floor, their plaid and corduroy-clad bodies like 250 pegs, erect but impotent. Staring down their long noses (too much?) at a decent indie rock band not whiny enough for their taste. Were they stiff for fear of sloshing any $7 "Hop Obama" brew? Was it uncouth to bop a head? Was the band a bunch of phonies and I didn't know any better? They sounded pretty good to me.

Needless to say, at the expense of a real comedic scene of 250 still hipsters packed rim to eyeglass rim, I sabotaged any third rate cool status I might have and danced real head. Anyone who knows me knows this is no fib. I'm sure the one drunk girl appreciated the company.

Ahh...A (verbena) tree grows in Brooklyn.

***

The middle school is good place to be. Despite the few ingrates who greet me with comments like "do we have you all 3 years?" to which I must bite through my tongue not to say, you mean I'm stuck with YOUR underachieving, sniveling, whining, royally annoying pain in in the you know what for the next 3 years? Yeah, despite the one or two of them - school is fun again.

A much more captive audience of 7th graders await my lectures on progressive thoughts-of-the-day and plenty of reading and writing basics (thank the person that taught YOU how to outline an essay). This week we've also started to bop heads through Songs in the Key of Life I and II. My kids, like their dutiful teacher, move to good music, even if it is during silent reading time. They can't help but just dance, and that is why I love them.

And because they teach me plenty too. Most of all they have given me a fine, overdue morsel of truth - that I am actually an adult. I must be, right? If I'm the one in charge of their literacy achievement in 7th grade, which correlates so closely to their likelihood of reaching high school and college graduations, and the playlists to which they'll learn to dance like everyone's watching and fail to care -- I must be a grownup. Gulp.

Next week: Innervisions