-^-for posterity-^-

the electric slide and the boot scootin’ boogie. who would have ever thought. i knew not one thing about line dancing but now i’m in charge of organizing one.

my boss, ms. thuy, asked me about a month ago if i would perform a, “line dance.” that’s what i heard. i found out a few days ago that she meant, “live dance.” she had no idea what a line dance was. i said, “yes”, to the line dance before my mind registered what i was saying, “yes”, to. i’m not made for line dances.

a line dance, for those of us who aren’t familiar, is a dance performed in unison that repeats a set of steps over, and over, and over, and over… normally it’s accompanied by country music.

we organized the students into two groups. one group will perform the, “electric slide”, which is a discoish number that is simple and slow. we will try to teach it to the audience as well. that was also ms. thuy’s idea. what do i get myself into. the, “electric slide”, consists of sliding three times to the right, clapping, three times to the left, clapping and then shuffling around aimlessly. agh.

the second dance is much more difficult. brooks and dunn wrote a song called the, “boot scootin’ boogie” and some dolt decided to create a dance to coincide with it. some of the lyrics to the song are, “out in the country past the city limit signs there’s a honky tonky past the county line, the joint starts jumpin’ every night when the sun goes down.” and so on.

the dance is fast and full of spins and stereotypical cowboy moves. lots of leg crossing shuffling and stomps. there’s also something called a, “clomp”, but jack and i have no idea what that is. we made something up and everyone believed us.

in two days we’re destined to perform. we’re to perform in front of hundreds of guests and we’re destined to make fools of ourselves. we’re claiming that this is part of our culture while, in reality, we knew little or nothing about it before a week ago. imagine two towering white people stomping around a small, wooden stage with ten or so Vietnamese students. the thought’s enough to make my stomach flip-flop.