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But you danced with her really cool and much hotter friends?

No, I danced with someone who likes me.

I don't think dancing with your English teacher counts. She's required to pretend to like you.

-Pufer

Pufer, on Nov 2 2008, 12:25 PM, said:

Game, set, match.

Absolute Jenious!

Read between the lines, she was my age, man.

Sarcasm is a an artform, and Pufer is a master. If you go on taking these things so literally you have a morose future here.

Good job on the dancing with girls front, btw.

I wasn't taking it literally, actually. I just wanted a place to use that phrase.

If it offended anyone, I can edit it out.

He's a lucky guy, last time I tried dancing with a random chicks front, I was kindly escorted off the premises by two of the largest gorillas ever!!

What kind of "Dancing" could get you kicked out in that kind but aggressive manner?

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Yeah man, just think back to the Regular Storyline of Arpia2. You get smashed with a frickin mallet.

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Congrats. You're now one step closer to having one-fourth of a life, according to the Riddlemaster GX: Definition of a life. I'm taking several steps towards losing the half a life I have.

I danced with a girl once, only after her bugging me for about fifteen minutes. I somehow ended up getting punched in the head and kicked in the stomach and shin by some random people I don't know.

Interesting how that works, isn't it?

I remember one time when I went to a dance wearing all the protective padding known to man (and several known only to dolphins) to prevent pain. It worked, but it's probably because nobody came within 20 feet of me.

I don't know what's with you guys. Dances are not supposed to be painful. Unless it's a mosh pit, but even those aren't that bad.

Oh, if you were us, you'd understand.

But do you think it'd impress her if I mentioned that YouTube video I recently uploaded? (You want a link? Go to Just Chat.)

Dancing: A Pufervian Aside

Dancing is one of the many things on my list of things that I probably should've learned how to do at some point, but never did.

People hate it when I say stuff like that because they know that I know how to dance at least a little bit, just like everyone else. People remark that it's like riding a bike, or something else that everyone knows how to do. Of course, statements like this assume that I've ridden a bike, but I've never done that either. I have never, once, ridden a proper, two-wheeled bicycle, and haven't the faintest idea of how to do so. Similarly, I do not know how to effectively perform a single dance.

This sounds dubious even to me, surely I know how to perform a simple waltz or the YMCA dance or something. The problem is, I really can't do either. I could tell you the history of waltzing, the various variants, indicate the more popular waltzes, tell you about some famous waltzers throughout history and some of the best on the professional scene at present, and I could probably even draw you a diagram of how to do it, yet I don't believe I've ever actually done it myself and certainly wouldn't trust myself to perform a waltz at all capably. I can do the YMCA arm thing (in fact, I just did it to prove that I can - it took me three tries), but it occurs to me that there must be something going on while the Village People are not singing the "Y-M-C-A" chorus. Maybe not, but if I were thrust onto a dance floor right now to do the YMCA dance, I'd just stand still until the chorus came about and could join in. Maybe I'd shuffle my feet or something. While I could probably take cues from the people around me, I've never done the YMCA dance so have no idea about what to expect.

The thing is, it doesn't really matter. The only time that this comes up is when I end up at a party of some sort and am invited to dance. I always refuse and end up looking like some sort of idiot, but that doesn't much bother me (actually, this can lead to something that does bother me, in that occasionally people will insist and try to drag me out to the dance floor, which I resoundingly refuse to comply with, making the other person feel foolish, which, in turn, makes me feel like a complete ###### ). Ultimately, I would look like no less of an idiot when whomever has invited me to the dance floor realizes that I've not the faintest idea of what I'm doing.

Certainly, I have no doubt that this is the manner in which most people have learned how to dance over the years (I refuse to believe that the bulk of the population has paid for ballroom dance classes, or the like), but they're not going through the learning experience at formal cocktail parties hosted by billion-dollar corporate law firms.

-Pufer

I've done most conventional things with a girl but never danced with a one... but then I don't go clubbing or what ever you want to call it.

You gotta learn to dance before you learn to crawl.

Lap Dance > *

I was movin to the beat when I was shackin up in ma daddy's sack.

Come to think of it, I think I should probably learn to dance before attempting to dance with someone else.

Captain Zaphod Beeblebrox, on Nov 3 2008, 07:51 PM, said:

Nah, just go for it.

Honestly though, just feel the beat as best you can and either wayyy overdo it so it's comical in an intentional way or just move a little with the music enough so people don't think you're afraid to dance.

Slow dancing you'll figure out easily enough.

Everyone seems to be talking about dancing like it's some kind of exotic job that they're vaguely scared of having to do. It can be fun, you know.

Sundered Angel, on Nov 3 2008, 11:59 PM, said:

Not just can, but is supposed to be. It's just one of those things you can't worry about too much, because then it just ends up being no good.

I'd agree with you if I didn't know to the extent that formalism has come to dominate dance. The second that there is something to learn to participate, and you're expected to learn it, then there is something to worry about.

I'm okay with the idea of free-form dance. Go out on the dance floor, move about, have a good time. Cool.

Of course, some folks aren't okay with that. We can't just let people have fun, we have to give some structure to this s###. Let's invent line-dancing or some such. Now you need not only go out there and move around, you need to move around to the beat, performing elaborately-choreographed, song-specific moves.

Now, I'm sure you could have fun doing this, but it seems an awful lot like a chore to me. Not only are you involving yourself in a generally pointless activity, but you're allocating finite time and effort into learning how specifically to involve yourself in a generally pointless activity that is in no particular manner any better than a free form version of the same activity requiring a great deal less effort and opportunity cost to buy into.

But that's even okay. If people get their kicks by ballroom dancing or whatever, that's cool with me. What annoys me is the social expectation that I should (1) know how to perform some of these formalized dances, (2) be willing to perform these formalized dances, and (3) actually enjoy being forced to perform some of these formalized dances. Add this onto the rigid expectation that I should attend events where such expectations come into play, and you're starting to really bug me.

When I say that I should've learned to dance at some point, I'm not saying that I should've done so because I think it would be enjoyable, I only mean that I should've learned to dance because it's the type of social bullcrap chore that the Great White Father has seen fit to force on everyone.

-Pufer

I hereby put forward the above should be used as an excuse to abolish any form of structured dance on the dance floor.

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This post has been edited by undead_shadow: 04 November 2008 - 05:05 AM

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Heh, now you know how I felt.

I can't dance worth crap. Like I've said before, we had to do an approximately two week dance session in gym during middle school. Three years of torture where I went on to forget everything that happened less than a day after it ended. We were forced to learn the electric slide. That's all, and I can't remember squat. There was some other dance that we learned and again, don't remember a thing. I was forced to do the second, and slow dance. The second my friend stepped in and started dancing with her, I was out of there. Honestly can't believe I moved that fast.