Dance Dance

On a spring semester Saturday night in the burg, you can count on a few things.  Among these:

1. The majority of the people you see will be students.
2. If you go out to a nice dinner, you'll likely see fraternity boys and/or sorority girls all dressed up to go to a formal.
3. There will be dancing.  Lots of dancing.

The benefit of living in a college town is that it gives you the opportunity to re-live some of the best moments of your college days.  For me, this included formals and dancing.  I love love love to dance.  In fact, that's one of the reasons I love Vegas so much. Amazing clubs!  But that's a post for another time...

When formals and dancing collide...
My girls and I doing the hottest dance move in 1996 - the Marcarena

I also loved my sorority days and while we did a lot of fun things, getting dressed up, going to formals, and dancing bring back a lot of great memories.  So when ProMo and I see all the cute "kids" dressed up, nervous and enjoying a nice dinner, we can't help but feel nostalgic for those sweet days.  Sure we didn't know each other then, but that kind of thing is universally fun.

The "awww" moment quickly fades when we decide to head out and find our "perfect bar" in the 'burg.  This would be a place that has friendly bartenders, plays good music (to us this means top 40 pop/hip-hop), and is not swarming with college students. Easy to find in a city, impossible to find in Blacksburg.

We end up in a place that doesn't have a rep for being one of the standard student hangouts, but has great music blasting.  I'm tentatively hopeful.  I think things are looking up even more as I get carded, have the drunk girlfriend of the bouncer tell me I look "amazing" for 36 (thank you), and follow the sound of the music upstairs.  There, we are greeted by another bouncer who tells me that there's a $5 cover.  For...? Whatever, I gotta dance!

Vegas, not Blacksburg

But as soon as I'm on the dance floor, I immediately spy 2 of my students and quickly note that the average age is, at best, 19.  I do my best to get my dance on and avoid eye contact with students, but I am more focused on the insanity that surrounds me.

Going to Vegas and other clubs often, I am far too familiar of the ol' "grab and hump" (or as ProMo calls it - the "ball and socket") that drunk boys LOVE to pull on whoever is closest to them.  While this move is not exclusive to college kids, having it executed by sweaty, drunk, and generally awkward pubescent boys adds that little something that makes it slightly more desperate and sad, rather than just annoying.

And it's in these moments that I am glad that I am not in college anymore.

Too distracted and slightly depressed that we have not yet found the "perfect bar," we finish our drinks, watch more awkward mating rituals, and head home to snuggle with the dogs.   Being a grown-up isn't all bad...but I sure wish I didn't have to leave town to dance.