When I wrote this story, I tried to keep the perpsective of a ten year old growing up in the 50's. It is another of my boyhood memories, growing up in the Canadian Prairies.
Sports and square dancing were the two truly redeeming factors of school. But, you say, boys are usually only interested in sports and girls. Or later, sports, girls and cars. Okay. Let me get to the square dancing first.
It was mortifying to think that we had no choice. There was just no way we were ever going to get out of it. It was written in stone. Physical education could only be accomplished so many ways in a gym, with a blizzard blowing the minus 30 degree air around the playground of the school. To break the monotony, the teachers decided the children needed to learn square dancing.
The girls giggled and whispered amongst themselves while the boys fidgeted with their hands in their pockets and glanced at one another with a combination of horror and loathing on their faces. There was a lot at stake here. You see, there were certain girls that were OK, but they were in the minority. Even so, you just didn't touch them. End of subject. Then there were the 'others'. These were the ugly ones, the ones that stank, and the ones with reputations, although none of us could actually define what a reputation was. These creatures were avoided like the plague, and indeed were a plague, if even touched or brushed past. Call them fleas, germs, or whatever, but these untouchables had them in spades and they were easily transmitted. The contagion was so reprehensible that indeed, if one brushed past one of these persons, say with an elbow, the infected part of the body could be cleansed only by running to another boy, rubbing the elbow hard on his body, somewhere, and calling out the name of the girl and the word fleas. The disease could be continually spread throughout the classroom until it was watered down to the point where interest was simply lost, or there could not possibly be any fleas left after having been rubbed on so many guys.
So you can imagine the reluctance to learn square dancing, because, although we did not know much about it at all, we had all seen or heard of Don Messer's Jubilee, a hot bed of square dancing kind of TV show. And having seen the goings on with those dancers, we knew there would be touching and there would be lots of it.
There was some basic instruction, an introduction to the music, (curses on those portable record players) and the inevitable pairing off into groups of eight dancers per square. There was a momentary glimmer of hope when one of the boys lamely suggested that boys dance with boys. This was a brave gesture as we all knew that there was death in touching girls, but there was also death in being called a homo.
Having grown up with sisters, I deep down knew that touching a girl would not kill me, but there is this thing called mob mentality. I was one of the guys and we were all doomed. Four girls were selected, and immediately, I, together with three other guys, was told to "go stand over there with them". There, in the group of four, that would soon be transmitting their fleas to us innocent young men, were two girls of the first category, the OK category. I was relieved, but at the same time, there were two 'others' in the group also. ‘They’ who brought sardine sandwiches to the last Friday of the month Red Cross Meetings and subsequent 'last lesson of the week' parties. Nobody ate them for two reasons. They were sardine sandwiches, and they had the worst kind of fleas possible, having been handled multiple times by their creators. Nobody knew what really happened if one actually ingested these fleas of the first order. Not one of the guys was willing to find out.
I will never forget it. There was 'OK' Marion Rode, there were the incurable flea ridden Gloria and Jeannie Romashenko, and then there was Jackie Rosea. Of all the OK girls, Jackie was at the top of the heap. She was a dark haired, brown eyed, swarthy skinned girl. The exact opposite of my blonde, blue eyed, fair skinned sisters. That intrigued me. The moment of truth snuck up on us rather quickly. The girls were to choose their partners and no fighting over the best dancers. That was a lame attempt at humour. Jackie made a purposeful few strides in my direction as soon as the instruction was given, and to this day I do not know if it was because she found me appealing, or if it was because the other three guy in our group smelled of farm animals and she preferred the smell of groceries. I sent up a quick prayer of gratitude.
The first hurdle was overcome, but there was still a mountain to climb. The first lesson was basic movement around the square and familiarizing ourselves with the different calls and the terminology. No touching. Another prayer of thanksgiving. Maybe by tomorrow, President Kennedy will have bombed Cuba, Kruschev will have retaliated, Saskatoon will have been wiped off the face of the earth, and there will be too much plutonium in the air to conduct classes. That would be a truly good news, bad news type of thing. No more square dancing, but no more Saskatoon Pioneer days either.
When my mother would make a dentist's appointment for me, out of necessity, it would be months ahead. I thought of it everyday and dreaded it, playing it out in my mind until it became a monster, a thing of fear and dread. So too was the dawning of a new day, a day that would find me dancing with a girl, touching hands and horror of horrors, touching other parts of our bodies. (Please, not cheek to cheek!) But, like the dentist appointment, the time does eventually arrive and you just have no choice but to go through with it. The lesson I had never learned was that it usually was not as bad as I had imagined.
The moment came. Her hand was soft and warm. We gently clasped fingers, palm to palm, and the other hand suddenly became my universe. It was supposed to hold the waist of my partner. My hand went just close enough to brush the fabric of her sweater. Technically, this could easily be close enough. However, this finely measured distance could not be sustained as we began twirling around the dance floor and it became a necessity to firmly grasp her waist in order to maintain direction and balance.
Jackie Rosae! My first love.
As I felt her hand clasp mine a little more firmly, and I felt the slight curve of her waist move beneath my other hand as we dosey doed around the square, I became intoxicated. I had no clue what this was all about, but I did know that I suddenly liked square dancing. And I liked it a lot.
The other part of that story is that square dancing, unlike conventional types of dancing, requires that the dancers change partners frequently, alamanding left and right, and swinging other partners to and fro. This inevitably resulted in multiple contaminations of girl fleas. Because all the guys were in the same boat it did not make any sense to try any kind of decontamination ritual. This, then, became the beginning of the end, for all us boys, of the fear of fleas. Sardine sandwiches, however, were still taboo.
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