The Church sponsored a monthly youth dance on a region basis. These were in response to the school dances which weren’t always up to Church standards as far as volume of the music, lighting, style of dancing, or style of dress of the participants. Region Dances in my mind were better than school dances anyway. To attend one you had to have a dance card which you obtained in an interview with your bishop. It was pretty easy to get as long as you were active in the Church and you saw the bishop on your birthday and at other times when he wanted to interview you. The age limit was nineteen, while the youngest people allowed in were fourteen-year-olds. The dances always featured a live rock band, although in later years, due to funding concerns we sometimes had dances with records playing instead of a live band. A spot light always shone on a ball of mirrors in the center of the gym ceiling and caused a whirling circle of light to fly around the room. The region consisted of several stakes and there were always 200 to 300 teenagers there. Half of them were girls. It seemed that my goal was to dance with everyone of them.
Except for the school proms and girls preference dances which were formal dress, date dances, I always wore a silky open collar shirt and blue corduroy pants. The epitome of what any cool guy would wear to a dance in the late 1970s. I was never into disco. For me, a dance was supposed to be all rock ‘n roll. You can imagine with all those people, it got pretty hot in there. I had an unwritten goal to dance every dance. Maybe I wasn’t too sure about dances when I was in seventh and eighth grades, but by ninth grade. I loved them. And in high school, I liked them even more. In dances, you could ask girls to dance with you without the pressures of dating. It wasn’t the commitment of a whole evening, but only five minutes. If a girl pulled a face when you asked her to dance, then you knew she probably would not want to go out with you later on. But if she seemed to enjoy dancing with you, then she was a future person to ask out. It was such a scary thing to ask a girl out, it helped to have as much evidence that she might say yes. And dances were a way to test the waters. By high school I had developed into a very flashy dancer. Maybe it wasn’t precise and elegant, but it was a work-out. A friend from the cross country team said to me once, “You look like you’re doing calisthenics out there. Jumping Jacks and everything but push-ups.”
Now, fast dancing was okay. But I really just put up with it. The reason I went to the dances in the first place were the slow dances. It was hard for me to form close friendships with girls since I was so shy. But slow dancing provided instant closeness. I made sure I had two lists in my mind when I was at a dance. A list of girls I just wanted to dance with and a list of girls I definitely wanted to slow dance with. If a girl stood alone, it was a lot less intimidating to ask her to dance. When a group of girls congregated and talked, it was very embarrassing to walk up to the whole group. Every girl there was either silently saying, “Oh no, here comes that jerk!” or “Why aren’t you going to ask me to dance? you jerk!” And if the one you asked turned you down, well, that was mortifying.
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