"Footloose" was a Documentary, Y'all

                Just like Kevin Bacon’s character in Footloose, I have been dealt harsh punishments from good Christians related to dancing in a place thought to be inappropriate.  It was a cook-out at a lake.  Allow me to explain.

                My aunt and uncle had a ranch just outside the bustling metropolis of Bogata, TX, population (allegedly) 1,100.  I’m unsure who or what was deemed as ‘population’, but based on my time living there, this included dogs, blackbirds and, when necessary to get up the numbers back up due to someone’s death, tractor tires. 

The specific location of the ranch was Rosalie, an even tinier community as far away from the Bogata Baptist Church as it takes for someone (usually me) to sing the country super-group Alabama’s hit “Love in the First Degree”, if you held the last note for a good 30 beats or so.  This must be done from either the open bed of a pickup (Ford or Chevy depending on your inclinations) or the open truck of a Lincoln Town Car, depending on who was driving.  Those who are surprised must not be familiar with my background as the lead singer of The Pine Branch Boys, when I was in the 8^th Grade.  I have carried the baggage of celebrity for a long time, y’all.

As there isn’t much to do in Bogata, much less Rosalie, there were often activities planned for the youth at church that included inventing new reasons to eat outside at night.  I don’t know if this particular cookout was to celebrate the fact that it gets dark at night or that it was summer or something equally mundane, but cookout we did, on the banks of Lake Providence West. The original Lake Providence was in Northeast Louisiana, where my parents grew up and met and I and my sister were born, after an appropriate lapse in time, thank you.  This body of water was much, much smaller but we were homesick, I suppose.

Once we started the fire, ate our hot dogs and s’mores (in which the chocolate never melted from the heat of the marshmallows, regardless of how hard those commercials try to convince you is possible), most of the adults retired to my aunt and uncle’s home, about a mile away, on the other side of the Irby Dairy Farm, possibly to escape the noise and Christian antics of a baker’s dozen Baptist youth.  I never saw an aerial view or drawing of my relative’s ranch but, based on the fact that we had to drive through the dairy farm to go from one side of the ranch to the other, the Irby’s land was the hole in the center of the donut of my extended family’s acreage.

Someone had brought their jambox that also had a radio (remember those?) and we found a station playing what we had been told was the devil’s music.  You may remember them as The Go-Gos. 

As heathens are wont to do, some of us started dancing, only two of us with any rhythm.  Baptists are not known for being rhythmic in any capacity and rarely use the word as it sounds ‘dirty’.  It was innocent fun and ended rather quickly due to God being omnipresent and, therefore, lurking somewhere nearby we assumed, but I had seen a new dance move by one of my cousins that intrigued me.  I saved her from recrimination then and I am steadfastly loyal even now.  As all innocents do, right before their undoing, I asked for and received a quick lesson and mastered the rudiments if not the dance itself. 

The next morning, after breakfast back at the house, the adults were in the living room chatting.  The teens and really tall 12-year-olds were in the kitchen performing some sort of child labor and singing, I assume, Hard Knock Life (from Annie) as you do when you are feeling overworked and underappreciated, when something came over me.  I don’t know if it was the devil himself or too much socializing with The Methodists, but I took my new dance step out for a test drive.  Any sin committed in the dark is quickly exposed in the light and I was caught red-handed or rather red-footed by one of my aunts.  When she asked, heatedly, what I was doing, I said, “Dancing” as ashamed as an Amish teenager on Rumspringa, y’all.

I was summoned before the tribunal, otherwise known as my mother, grandmother, other aunt and uncle.  They demanded I give a full account of the activities including, if possible, at which point we had headed down the path of unrighteousness, a demonstration of the sinful movements and a list of fellow sinners and/or witnesses.  My crazy aunt tried not to laugh; the other members were as serious as a spelling bee, people.  I felt like someone on trial, which I most assuredly was.    

Have you ever had to complete a brand-new dance move with no accompanying music, while crying, on a Saturday morning in the living room of a single-wide trailer in Northeast Texas?  No?  Trust me when I tell you this is humiliation on an epic scale, especially when there is the very Biblical wailing and gnashing of teeth inside your head.  Silent, internal flagellation will throw off your rhythm something fierce, y’all, especially when you are trying to modify the dance move into whatever is least likely to get you cast into the Lake of Fire. 

Apparently, I felt stomping my foot really hard in one spot, like I was either ‘pitching a fit’ or squishing a bug, was the least offensive move I could make.  The tribunal scoffed and peppered me with more questions, demanding to know if that was really all that happened and instructing me to reveal my co-sinners.  Tearfully, and with a confidence I did not feel, I lied; like the heathen that I was.  I started wondering what it would be like in the Outer Darkness, where I was about to be cast.  I hoped there would be at least a night light as I was scared of the dark, y’all.  For real. 

Based on every After-School Special I had ever seen, starring unknown British kids with bad haircuts, I knew I had only tasted the sinful freedom of dance.  My punishment was the tried and true ‘whooping and solitary confinement’, which in a single-wide trailer was more akin to ‘don’t you dare look at anybody or have fun in any way’.  Even though I was unused to much punishment, being as close to Jesus as one can be wearing Husky-sized Tuffskins and hand-me-down cowboy boots, I was able to cope with the repercussions of my mistake.  But, in my heart-of-hearts, where all my secrets were kept, I knew I had to keep dancing; not so much for the love of movement, but for the opportunity to excel.  If dancing was to be my ultimate downfall (as was verbalized by someone in the tribunal – I was too teary-eyed to make out who), I wanted it to be for something a bit more decadent and/or impressive than the Electric Slide.

Can I get an Amen up in here?

Is 'Shame' a Setting on Your Microwave?

                I recently became aware of a peculiarity of mine.  I never really paid attention to this little quirk, but now I am cognizant and since we’re friends, I feel it bears discussion.  My shameful secret?  I always stop the microwave at one second; I don’t let it complete the cycle.  I don’t relish the ‘ding’, y’all.  As someone who is always curious about why people do the odd things they do, I had to do a little investigation of myself, thinking back to where and when it all started.

                My family bought our first microwave in 1979, when we lived in Tallulah, Louisiana, in the two-story house directly behind the post office.  It was an old, historical house, but my mother was determined to have a modern kitchen.  She bought a combination stove/oven/microwave unit from Amana, I think.  The stovetop was ceramic and would instantly heat up.  The microwave was affixed to the top and it was huge.  You, literally, could have cooked a full-size turkey, if so inclined.

                We didn’t know how to use it.  For most of the first year, we only melted cheese with it; onto baloney or into sliced wienies, depending upon the preparer’s preferences.  We actually called it a “Cheese Melter”.  My classmates in Mrs. Green’s Fourth Grade Class at Tallulah Academy can attest to my bragging about the giant appliance purchased to melt cheese quickly.  I thought we were so fancy.

                When Christmas rolled around, we bought my mother a microwave cookbook at the S&H Green Stamp store with the stamps we had been collecting at the A&P Grocery Store all year.  With cookbook in hand, my mother began to experiment.  Grits, soups and warmed up leftovers were successes; turkeys and cakes were revolting failures.  However, I couldn’t remember having any ding-averse motivations as a child.  The ding was actually a welcome sound – it meant it was time to eat.  It was the 20^th century equivalent of the dinner bell or dinner gong, if you were British and had a butler.

                Surprisingly, I still have my mother’s microwave cooking set, with two pieces I have never used, both cake-related (bundt and cup, to be specific).  I typically only use the large dutch oven to make haystacks at Christmas or queso when the mood strikes, which is about twice a year; more often and I’d be quite a bit chubbier than I am.  And then it hit me.  The reason I avoid the ding is shame. 

                I was always a chubby child, but never actually fat.  The reason was my food intake was monitored by my mother (to ensure a healthy diet) and my sister (to ensure equal distribution, mostly related to Nacho Cheese Doritos).  When I was in high school in Tylertown, Mississippi, and I was actually allowed to go ‘to town’ and participate in (mostly innocent) night-time activities that caused me to get home late, awake long after my family had gone to bed, I began to sneak snacks.  A ding at midnight would have been the clarion call of gluttony; Dusty was violating scripture by eating something outside of approved meals and snacks, knowing full well that I had already eaten something at The Sonic that, at minimum, had included a large order of tater tots and a Cherry Dr. Pepper.

                If I was ninja-like in my reflexes, I could slip into the kitchen, nuke some vittles, stop the process pre-ding and slip away in the dark to my bedroom to savor my ill-gotten gains, enrobed in darkness, hidden from judging eyes.  I guess I thought Jesus had poor vision at night.  It was a nefarious activity, on par with surreptitiously watching Cinemax After Dark or USA’s Up All Night movies.

                For some reason this habit stuck with me through college and into adulthood, even now as I am chasing 48 like it robbed me at the outlet mall.  And that got me thinking they should re-design microwaves, adding a ‘Shame’ setting next to ‘Popcorn’ that gives no notification when the cycle is finished, knowing the intended recipient of the covertly reheated casserole has not left his or her post, impatiently staring, practically stalking their twirling tacos and pirouetting pizza slices like Jack McFarland stalks Kevin Bacon. 

                Ooh, maybe I should go on Shark Tank to tout my idea.  This screams “America”, am I right?