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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 26, 1991)
■hmmhbbm •student discounUaMMMHi futons the unmade bed FUTON ♦ FURNITURE Omaha 108th & Center402/397-9340 Opening Soon E 227 N. 9th St. Lincoln, NE 68508 Hours 11 a.m.-l a.m. Alternative Dance Music Thursdays-Fridays-Saturdays 9 p.m.-l a.m. Import Beer on Tap Pitchers.$6.25 Pounds.$1.85 Domestic Beer on Tap Pitchers.$3.25 Pounds.$1.25 Premium Quality Drinks.$1.75 Nightly Drink Specials Great Food and Easy, Free Parking (On the corner of 9th & Q) Watch for more information! I We offer professional service and consultation with Aveda skin care and colour cosmetics. /VEDA The Pink Flamingo 4003 'O' St. 488-8628 Mike Weixei/DN I gave way to junior-high kisses! By Cinnamon Doltken Staff Reporter I was tricked into taking dance lessons. Everybody knows there are a number of questions parents ask that you can blow off without any real consequences — especially when you’re preoccupied. I did this regularly. Apparently, mom knew it. She waited until I was preoccupied. I was about 7-years-old, playing in the back of the station wagon. Mom asked me something that I didn’t hear. “Yeah," I answered offhandedly. So, she signed me up. I tried my hardest to beg off, but mom wouldn’t budge. At my first lesson, I met my teacher, a hardened, bony woman dressed in a black leotard and tights. She was scary. Her name was Theresa. She told me that first, I would have to warm up and stretch. “See Susie over there? Just prac tice doing what she’s doing." Susie was on a mat by the wall, contorted into the shape of an O. She lay on her stomach and her feet arched around to rest on top of her head. She grinned. It was sick. I said, “No way." Theresa gave me a sidelong glance. “Try it," she said. “Try it," Susie said. I crumbled under the pressure. I tried it. I actually tried to pull my feet over my head. Needless to say, it didn’t work. I made a U instead of an O. Theresa told me to rock back and forth and to keep stretching my feet toward my eyebrows. I got home after the lesson, and asked mom if I could quit. She de clined and said it was for my own good. Dancing lessons would de velop my poise, she said. (Yeah, I can see that. In a difficult social situation? Don’t fret. Put your feet on your eyebrows.) I stuck it out. I toe-heeled and shuffle-shuffled through one year. After the recital, I renegotiated with Mom. I’d take piano lessons in stead. I shelved my lap shoes, but my dancing days were far from over. My friends Sandy and Nicole would come over and we would dance in my living room. We were great — better than the Solid Gold dancers. We knew it, too. We entered our selves in the grade school talent show. We wore red satin leotards with silver stars across the chests. They even had silver, spangly fringe. In our eyes, we were hot stuff. There would be no toe-heel for us: We shook our skinny hips to Leif Gar reit’s “Runaround Sue." And we lost. The judges picked a sixth-grader who warbled “God Bless America.” I still don’t under stand it. In any case, I didn’t do any more public dancing until I hit junior nigh and danced with boys. You remember how it was at junior high dances. Your English teacher, tne class sponsor, would pair you up with some boy and send you out on the floor. He would put his hands on your waist. You would put your hands on his shoulders. You'd move from side to side and avoid looking at each other at all cost. You would admire the pink streamers, hanging limply on the walls. You’d smile at your friend, who would be dancing with the kid in your algebra class. She wouldn’t be looking at him, either The song would end, partners would auickly uncouple and hurry off the dance floor. But, if you were “going” with the boy you were dancing with, it was different. It was serious. He’d wrap his arms around you and you’d wrap yours around him. You’d press your foreheads together and stare lovingly into each other’s one great big eye (the two would sort of meld together at such close range). KISS would sing the only heart wrenching ballad they ever wrote, and you wouljd be oblivious to everything around you. You wouldn’t care that you were danc ing in the school hallway, or that the walls were decorated with sagging crepe paper. About three-quarters of the way through the song, you’d kiss, and as your lips parted, a string of spittle would connect you. Itwould break into a hundred glittering droplets, and you would sigh con tentedly and press your fordncads together again. It is questionable that our danc ing improved by the time we hit high school, but most of us learned to kiss without the spittle string aftermath. Protestant lives conservatively while observing forbidden acts By Mark Baldridge Staff Reporter I was once part of an extremely conservative Protestant clique. Don’t blame me, I was born into it. You regular people have no idea what kind of thing I mean. You have to have experienced it for yourselves. Just imagine the most ultra-con servative fundamentalist you've ever run into; then add a lot more edu cation and double the rabidity — and you approximate the kind of thing I grew up training to be. Things have changed a little since the '60s, when I was a kid: my parents in reaction to the hippies; the hippies in reaction to people indistinguishable from my parents. In those days the number of things we church kids weren’t allowed to do approached infinity. We weren’t allowed to say “heck.’’ We were forbidden to watch “Happy Days.” And though we had a pool in the back yard, we weren’t al lowed to engage in "mixed bath ing," a term that — for all the nudity implied in “bathing” —- simply meant little boys and girls were not per mitted in the pool at the same time. (To this day, a wet body is the shortest path to my Id.) But most of all, the cardinal sin, and possibly the most divisive pro hibition was, “No Dancing." Dancing led to drinking, by means of some torturous logic, like sex leads to the pitter-patter of little feel. And isn’t it obvious that the motivations of the dance floor are often something less than spiritual? Try “carnal" on for size. I knew See DANCE on 10
