Yes, WE Will Go with You to the Dance

Youguys, youguys, youguys! Ohmygosh, youguys!

So, let's just say (totally hypothetically) that your 16 year old daughter - we'll call her Abbie - was creatively asked to her first school dance on Saturday night! And, just for funsies, let's also pretend that you belong to a fantastic book club (which is closed) and it's your turn to host, so your home is filled with 10 amazing people who think your daughter is pretty neat-o, and they can BARELY contain their excitement that they have a front row seat to the actual moment she is asked!!!!

You know what? Let's get even more detailed. 

Let's imagine that it kind of happens like, oh, I don't know, like this: (names have not been changed)

You're all sitting in the front room, discussing books and life and food. (Not in that order.) 

The doorbell rings. 

Kacy: (Who has an uncanny ability to sense things, we'll call her the Doorbell Whisperer.) Abbie's getting asked to a dance! I just saw somebody run away from the door!

Everyone: AAAAAHHHH!

Katie: I'll get Abbie! (Abbie was downstairs, watching a movie with her siblings.)

Everyone else jumps into place. By this, I mean Chris stations himself at the piano and starts playing the appropriate mood music - a kind of dramatic pomp and circumstance riff. The rest of us make a line from the stair banister to the front door, so Abbie gets to/has to walk by all of us on her way to the door. Except my friend, Josh, the only one with sensibilities telling him that this might be embarrassing for Abbie. He hides in the kitchen. 

The room has EXPLODED with emotion! I mean, the thrill, the anxiety, the nervousness, the giddiness - it's all in pieces on the floor and walls and us! Patrick does the sensible thing and films the entire moment.

Once Abbie opens the door and reads the note out loud, we are all abuzz again; planning a proper creative response to this young man, who has no idea what he has started by simply dropping off a plate of toast and a note on this fateful night.  

Within minutes, and even after Abbie has retreated to the safety of the basement, we have already made our own plans for how Abbie should creatively respond to this invitation, what she should wear, what our coordinated outfits should look like for when he picks her up for the dance and we all go to the dance WITH Abbie and her date, and a highly choreographed flash mob. (Admittedly, we aren't sure exactly when the flash mob will be needed - but we're leaning towards the moment he rings the doorbell. Cue the Doorbell Whisperer.) (We are about 68% kidding on all of these things.)

So, I am just wondering…is your 16-year-old self totally cringing while you read this? Would you be mortified or handle it with grace and a smile like Abbie? Would you hate your parents and their friends? And again, this is absolutely hypothetical, I'm asking for a friend. 

My Most Embarrassing Moment

Not my actual bum or pants. 

One night, whilst in college, I went out on a first date with a girl named…hmmm… It started with an E. (I cared for her, deeply, as you can see.) Elaine? Elizabeth? Anyway, we were walking through a park, fairly close together, but with our hands in our jacket pockets, as it was a fall evening, and the weather was pleasantly cool. When out of the blue, Ellen says, “Tell me your deepest, darkest secret.”

I did not care for this.

Firstly, I had known Ester for about two days. Who was she to demand to know my deepest, darkest secrets? Was I to automatically trust this attractive – though virtually unknown – woman at face value? A woman who had not shared her deepest, darkest secret with me? A woman who found it perfectly acceptable to walk through a park and consider it a date? A woman whose name started with an E? (Edie? Electra? Ebony?)

But secondly, and most importantly…I didn't have any deep, dark secrets. Unless you counted my extensive Huey Lewis & the News CD collection. (And I didn't.)

I’ll never know what Edwina was probing for that day. But I have attended a number of social gatherings since then where people play such “get-to-know-you” games where you are required to recount, in great detail, information you would not normally or casually put on display. “Deep, dark” information, as it were. Only now it is masqueraded as “What’s your most embarrassing moment?”

Well, I happen to have one.

It was early summer, 1993. If memory serves, Rod Stewart couldn't remember if he’d told us lately that he loved us, Tom Hanks was having difficulty sleeping somewhere in Washington state, and I was dating a lovely young woman from Salem, Utah. Danielle.

With BYU located not too far from Salem, we would occasionally go visit Danielle’s family for some dining and dancing. (Mostly dining.)

On this particular weekend, her family’s ward, the Salem 984th Ward, was having a barbecue in a nearby canyon. I am a big fan of both barbecues and canyons, so I was excited to go.

It was still early enough in the summer that it was quite cool up the canyon, so there was a roaring fire to take off the chill. I had helped Danielle’s little brother get a plate of food, and he went off to sit by his sister on a log by the fire. I got my own plate and, not seeing a place to sit, remained standing as I ate on the other side of the fire, straight across from Danielle and her little brother.

There was a large turnout of people, and there were conversations taking place all over the camping area; though most people didn't drift too far from the fire. I had chatted with a few pleasant folks, making nice and quashing rampant rumors about our impending engagement.

I was finishing the last of my barbecued chicken and preparing to throw my plate in the fire, when I felt an odd sensation around my…uhm, derriere. It was a hand. At first it was cupping my bum, but then it began to rub it. And rub it. And rub it. It was as if my bum was a lamp, and they were expecting Robin Williams to appear. Alarmed, my eyes searched across the fire for Danielle. Not that it would have been okay if Danielle was doing this to me, but she was really the only familiar person there. 

Slowly, as if I were being held at gunpoint, I turned and looked to my left. There, facing away from me…was a total stranger. She was probably mid-forties, long hair, mother of five. And her right hand was now stuffed into the back pocket of my jeans. She had clearly mistaken me for somebody else – her tall, firm-bummed husband, for example. Unsure of what to say, but confident this was going to end no other way than badly, I didn't say anything.

I stood there staring at her, waiting for her to turn and make eye contact with a man who she did not know. A man who was not comfortable with the whereabouts of her hand. A man who did not give this stuff away for free!

Finally, she turned and realized she had been fondling the wrong bum. Oh, the horror in her eyes! The shock! In an effort to defuse the situation and bring some levity to the entire scene before she could speak, I threw my arm around her shoulder and said, “Hey, baby, you coming with me?”

“YOU’RE NOT MY HUSBAND!”

Well, she had found her voice. The entire ward stopped and turned. Wards from neighboring canyon barbecue parties stopped and turned. Yes, in addition to roving hands, this woman had some lungs. But now, while her stating of the obvious should have incriminated her, I suddenly look like the visiting sick-o from outside the ward who had been going around shoving people’s hands into my back pockets.

Well, we all had a good laugh, she decided to go back to her husband, and I never visited Danielle’s family or ward again.

Edwina, if you’re still out there, I have a story for you now.