Dance Fever

Raising a child is such a wild experience. There are times when you're blown away by your kid's wisdom or talent or personality, and there are times when you just say, "what the ?!" The indeterminate interplay of nature versus nurture makes watching them grow so interesting ... and so nerve-wracking.

Case in point: tonight. We have just finished watching The Lion King 1.5, and with the rolling credits, on comes a song by Raven (of "That's So Raven" fame). It's a pop-ish kinda number, with a contagious beat, and I give both my boys credit for just feeling compelled to move to it spontaneously. Then came the aforementioned "what the ?!" moment, as I witness my five-year-old begin to perform what could only be described as an unmistakable kindergartener version of The White Man's Overbite. He was thrashing around a hair's breadth away from looking like he was having a seizure, with some impromptu break-dancing-ish moves thrown in, but you could see that he KNEW those moves were SWEEEEET.

Now of course he's only five, and no one's ever shown him how to dance or nuthin', and of course I am imagining a trajectory that may be unreasonable, but too many school dances either pitying or being the Girl Who Came With the Bad Dancer Who Thinks He's Good made me instinctively recoil internally. I began to worry and project. The girls will run! The guys will beat him up! My son is Urkel-in-waiting! Or worse yet, Screech!

See, I can dance quite well (though I.O. was always a smidge better) and hubby can dance pretty well (though he has only, like, three moves, he has good rhythm). Look a little further up the family tree, however, and the horror begins. My mother can dance (if she's biting her lip and closing her eyes and it's a 50's song), but my father, well he can only embarrass -- a point he last proved with a stunning performance at our youngest sister's wedding in 2000. No one knew what to say or do except look on in wonder. There were a lot of thrashing, tribal-slash-hillbilly-type moves, all executed with great enthusiasm and a red face from the exertion. I don't think he'd had more than Coca Cola to drink, either. None of us will ever forget it.

So should I be worried? The two of them (my son and my father) have proved to be quite similar to date in many other ways. Like their love of rocks. And a fondness for pick-up trucks. Although my boy can sing in tune, and my father loves to sing but does so somewhere in the vicinity of the tune's parking lot. Maybe there's hope. Plus, I always have another son.