Why I Don’t Two-Step

From time to time, I have conversations with people who are perplexed that I haven’t two-stepped. As if this is some sort of right of passage. I also have never line-danced with the exception of that Macarena business. I don’t listen to country music and certainly don’t go to concerts such as Sawyer Brown even if they have been around for 25 years (apparently they’re the original winners of Star Search which right there is a reason I would never go in the first place). Apparently I missed the memo detailing the requirements for Midwestern Standards of Behavior. On occasion, people scrunch up their noses and look at me as if I’ve just said that I murdered my neighbors in their sleep for the sheer folly of it and ask, “What do you like? That hip-hop?” Hip-hop is said with a snarl like that would explain the murder thing. As if those are the only two things in the world. Country music and hip-hop. They were relieved when I said no but no less suspicious. And I’m not saying that everyone is that unkind because they aren’t. I just don’t understand how someone finds it difficult to understand that I haven’t done these two things (and now I take this back. I have gone to a country music concert at the Grand Ole Opry when I was 11 because my mother had a work convention there. The big name on the bill that night was Boxcar Willie. I was impressed because he really did sound like a train. But I also fell asleep before the night was over so there you go).

I present the following picture as Exhibit A:

evidence of why I have never two-stepped and also why I have never attended a Sawyer Brown concert. It does nothing for the murder thing as everyone knows that murderers wear black and hang out with people with funny hair. Which is way worse than hip-hop. It is also Exhibit A in what happens when honor students get tired of their squeaky clean geek image. And also the damning evidence against me in regard to that pesky lesbian rumor. Those are stories for another day, however. Today, it’s about the lame music and the dancing that requires not only touching but an amount of finesse and coordination that I have never really enjoyed in my dancing. I’m more of a free spirit. No touching!

At any rate, that’s me there in the middle with the perky smile. I’m an honor student even though I have tri-colored hair! You can’t actually tell that my hair is tri-colored but let me assure you that it was. I’m going to side-step the issue of my “date” which was my best friend Angie. We just wanted to go to the dance, alright? With no male prospects in sight we were more like 7th and 8th wheels with all those couples. It had a nice symmetry to it and you know, fit in the whole alternative theme. Getting back to the issue at hand, let me just say that kids that look like this don’t generally get into country music and two-stepping. Not even years after they’ve decided on one hair color and wear something besides black. It just doesn’t happen. At least not often. One of these kids did grow up to be an auctioneer and regularly wears those ugly western shirts and cowboy boots. I’ll ponder that one along with you because I don’t really get it.

I realize I grew up in a community where agriculture is the biggest industry. However, I didn’t grow up on the farm but in town which was like growing up in the suburbs. I like to think of my hometown as a giant suburb stuck way out here on the prairie as if it were once attached to a larger city at one point but broke off during some major seismic shift. What else could explain how it’s the largest metropolitan area between Minneapolis and Seattle without having even an ounce of urbanism? Even though we learned to weave through sugar beets that littered the road when we learned to drive, we tried to pretend we were from a much bigger place. We shunned everything farming and country and looked underground for our fun. Perhaps living in an agricultural community without having actual ties to that life created a certain sort of identity crisis for us town kids. Just who were we really? Since we couldn’t tell a soybean from and sugar beet, what did we know?

We spent our weekends going to house parties and weird places like the Armory to see garage bands perform original music. Often the music wasn’t that good but we raved about it anyway. Loud? Angry? Awesome! It was a supreme act of integrity when a mohawked lead singer jumped off the stage in the middle of a gig and refused to come back because someone requested he sing a Clash cover song. We nodded approvingly, even though our entertainment was cut short and headed to Sher’s kitchen early for BFR’s and coffee.

And yes, yes, yes, I attended lots of wedding dances as a child mostly in the outlying farm communities where my relatives tend to reside. I remember lots of twitching to Eric Clapton’s “Lay Down Sally” as only Midwestern white people can twitch. If there was any two-stepping going on, I was too young to notice or if I was a teenager I had probably already snuck out the side door to bum cigarettes from drunken guys going into the bar across the street (I was such a bad ass. In my own mind. Again, see picture.)

I’d like to include a story about Hennepin Avenue, a large girl named Gretchen Witch, a broom handle, a gang beating and a ride home. I’m not sure it says anything but there was no two-stepping or guitar twanging going on that night either. And I guess what I am trying to say is that there’s nothing in country music and the requisite dances that reflects any of my life experiences. Nothing about it rings true for me so I find it disconcerting that so many people find it strange that I don’t get into it. What is music and dancing for if not to reflect who we are?