Father/Daughter Dance

by Hero Jenkins

I was dreading the upcoming Father/Daughter Dinner Dance at my daughter’s high school. When I say dread, I’m putting it right up there with root canals and IRS audits; I did NOT want to go. To top it off, I learned that every one of these dances had a theme.

Seriously?

Not only do I have to make a fool of myself on the dance floor (I can’t dance in case you haven’t already guessed) but I have to do it in a costume!

My daughter was a freshman at a new school and she was excited. My wife was giving me one of those 'wife' looks... like: “You know you are going to this thing don’t you?”... “You know you have no choice in the matter right?” My football coach used to look at us and say: “The only way you are allowed to miss practice is if you are dead and someone brings me a note from God." It was one of those looks.

When I was in high school we did dances like "the four corners”, “the bump”, and “the hustle”. I had no idea which dance moves were current so I tuned into MTV and studied them. By the time dance night rolled around I was ready. My daughter was dressed like a rock star with huge glasses, boots, teal blue tights layered by other odd looking clothing that didn’t seem to match, and a plastic guitar. I was her bodyguard with dark shades and a leather coat. (I looked very cool I might add.)

When it came time to show off my moves I strutted out on the dance floor with the confidence of a pro wrestler who had memorized his script.

As it turned out, most of the dances at that time didn’t really require the male to do much. I basically did a two-step and looked cool (something I was already good at) and the women, or in this case my daughter, did all of the work. They also did most of the dancing with their backs to their partner which I thought was odd but whatever.

I did notice one other thing on MTV though. After the female had danced for a while, and if she was dancing well, it was the male’s job to acknowledge this by pretending to fan her to cool her off. So as soon as my daughter turned her back to me, I started fanning her just the way I'd seen on MTV.

Now, those of you who are old enough to have seen “Saturday Night Fever” will know what I’m talking about. (For the rest of you it’s “Step Up” I guess.) Anyway, just like in those movies, everybody moved off to the side and watched us go to work. My daughter had her back to me and she must have had her eyes closed because she really didn’t notice what I was doing until her friends who had all stopped dancing to watch us started screaming.

“Your DAD is SOOOOO COOL!” they shrieked!

When she finally looked back at me (judging by the look on her face) I realized I had done something REALLY dumb. Though I had no clue what.

“DAD! What are you doing!?!”

Before I could react, the song ended and she took my hand and led me back to our table (to a thunderous applause).

“Where did you learn that?!?”

“I watched MTV . . . why?”

“Do you even know what you were doing?”

“I was fanning you... I don’t understand what the problem is. Your friends loved it and all of the other dads are jealous,” I said proudly.

“That dance move is not fanning,” she said through clenched teeth, “that’s SPANKING!”

“Ohhhhhh...”

The only thing that saved me was that the other dads were clueless and their daughters thought it was so cool that they never told anyone what it really meant.

There were other Father/Daughter Dances but we never replicated the “magic” of that first one. It didn’t matter though because I'd already guaranteed my “star” on the dad’s “walk of fame”... which no doubt would have been moved to the “walk of shame” had any of the other dads actually realized what I was doing out there.