Hestia and Sonshine's....social dancing

Don't dance with her -
she's being a twat

When I was at school, we just used to call it Dancing and it heralded, for me at any rate, the magical dream-time when A Boy Might Actually Fancy Me and the Frock Frenzy that was the Christmas School Dance.

Back at secondary school we were all shepherded in to the Games Hall in the middle of the school building.  It had a high vaulted ceiling and smelled strongly of decomposing rubber matting. Or teenage boys.  I could never tell the difference.


We girls would be lined up at one side of the hall, giggling and hoping that Someone Special would swoop in and pluck us out from the crowd for the morning's dancing session.

You hope against hope that it's maybe the guy in Maths (who refused to look at me and with whom, of course, I fell hopelessly in love) ..... or maybe the guy with the parka whom I'd never noticed before until he appeared in a dream one night and then I developed entirely unrequited soft squishy feelings for.  Even if he was a good 7 inches shorter than me.)

Inside our heads we looked like this.....

But in reality it was more like this.....

Yes, dear reader, these are the thoughts that would be racing excitedly through my mind as the boys, huddled against the opposite wall of the gym hall, were prodded into plodding action by Mr McNaughton.  Those hopeful little thoughts would butterfly around my little skull right up to the point when all the Someone Specials (and even the We're Just Good Pals boys) had picked their partners and I was left, like a slightly battered courgette, for one of the stragglers to pick up with a half-hearted nod.

Ah, it all seems like yesterday and not the 1970s!

Today Sonshine's class started their annual Social Dancing lessons in preparation for the School Dance later this month.  I know that one ought not live vicariously through one's child, but I can't help it; all those excited hopes return and I encourage Sonshine to swoop in and dance with Someone Special.

He never does, of course.

He was dreading it.

"All the cool girls will roll their eyes and tut at me if I ask them to dance," he said with the resigned air of someone who fears being a battered courgette.

"Well, what about one of the not-so-cool girls? " I ask nonchalantly. "What about......Barbie?"

Reader, be assured that this child is not called Barbie and neither does she resemble the plastic boobtastic tippy-toed doll in any way.  I simply wish to distinguish her from Clean Amy (who has totally dropped off the radar this year btw).

"She's a bit High End for me," he said ruefully.

I gulped back a guffaw.

"High End?"

"Yeah, well she'll always gets picked.  But....very strangely..... not by the cool guys...."  He was starting to look a bit hopeful.

"Babes, when you regard a girl as High End and the cool guys don't pick her to dance with, do you know what that means?"

He shook his increasingly Young Jim Morrison-like head of hair.

"It means that SHE IS A BARGAIN!!! SNAP her up next time you're asked to pick a partner!"

He looked a bit happier.  Lynx deodorant was liberally applied beneath and on top of his shirt and off he went.

Cut to after school and Sonshine returns home.

"WELL?" I am beside myself with excitement.  Practically SITTING on the hall radiator while he throws down his bag and kicks off his shoes.

"Well what?"

"How did the dancing go?"

"Oh yeah, it was great.  Nobody rolled their eyes when I asked them to dance like last year.  We had a good laugh actually.  Can I play on the computer?"

And although our conversation was briefer than I would have liked, I hope that out there, somewhere, some girl is having a day-dream that my Sonshine will ask her to dance.

You never know how it will turn out....

...after all, that's how I met his father.