Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Dancing Anson Style...Memories of my Childhood

As you know, I took the kids to see The Nutcracker on Sunday. It's a beautiful ballet...I can't say I'd ever been to a "gen-u-ine" ballet before. I did go to Hillary's ballet recital when she was only 4, but I don't think that counts. But when Lisa and I were younger we would pretend to be ballerinas. We made our nephews join us. Mother had a collection of old albums of the classics and several of the songs from The Nutcracker were on that, so we would gather in the living room (the forbidden room...no playing in the living room) and dance. I remember loving the "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies" and "The Flight of the Bumblebees". We whirled and twirled and jumped and laughed. I was always the leader, so I'm almost positive that I was in charge of the choreography. Thinking back, I had no idea what these songs were from. I had no knowledge of The Nutcracker, so I have no idea how I knew to "boss" my fellow dancers into a frenzy of whirls and twirls and ungraceful leaps. None of us had any type of formal dancing instruction. We were just "country bumpkins" with huge imaginations. However we danced our hearts out. Now, I really don't even know how we were allowed to dance in the living room. Our parents must have been involved in some serious Wahoo game or maybe a game of 42 or 84. If they had known we were dancing in the living room....we would have been in major trouble. WE WERE FROM ANSON AND THERE WAS NO DANCING IN ANSON, much less in the living room.

Our other favorite dance and act was to our favorite album "The Royal Guardsmen" and their songs "Snoopy and the Red Baron" , "The Battle of New Orleans", "Peanut Butter" and our all time favorite "The Man who Shot Liberty Valance". We actually acted these songs out...so they were much more "religiously correct" than the dancing we did to the classical songs. Jeff and Greg were more eager to play along in these songs. We entertained ourselves for hours with the songs on this album.

Life was simple then. Thank goodness for our imaginations...and for parents who would occasionally forget the NO PLAYING IN THE LIVING ROOM RULE! Oh the memories of childhood!

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