I Still Need to Come Up With a "Magic Pants" Jingle

Look, a post that’s longer than a paragraph that isn’t a review of TV, Movies, or Books! Will wonders never cease?

A few weeks ago, Scuba Girl and The Nickless One organized a trip for the Singles Dept. to the Texas Dance Depot for dance lessons; they had learned that the Depot had dance lessons on the third Friday of each month and were wanting to make it a regular outing. Having been unable to go the last couple of times the gang had gone out dancing, I was looking forward to getting to go and make a fool of myself in public.

As usual, I was the first person at the church; not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I am almost pathologically early for everything (well, except work). I'm also almost always the last person to leave; don't want to miss out on anything, after all. I had only been there a few minutes when a couple of the Senior Adult ladies pulled up and passed on some info they had gotten from Freezeout earlier: the scuttlebutt was that the Depot was about to undergo renovation, and because of that the lessons was going to be free that night; in addition, there was even going to be free barbeque. “What great timing for our first visit,” I thought to myself.

Slowly, the rest of the group trickled in; the Senior Adult ladies got tired of waiting for us slowpoke youngsters and headed off to the Depot while we waited for Scuba-girl to get there, at which point we all piled in her Xterra and set off for the Depot as well. The carload included Scuba-girl, The Nickless One, and myself, as well as one of the newer Singles and a friend of Scuba-Girl. Everyone was pretty happy with the news that everything was going to be free, especially Scuba-Girl and her friend, neither of whom had eaten dinner yet. But our happiness was short-lived, for when we arrived at the Depot we learned the true reason everything was free: it was their last night to be open. Ever. Our first time visiting the Texas Dance Depot would also be our last. Did we have great timing or what?

Only slightly daunted, we plunged into the line for free food, which turned out to be a slight mistake, as they started the dance lessons just as we sat down with our meals. Torn between sustenance and tutelage, we chose sustenance, albeit hastily consumed sustenance. Having wolfed down our grub, we headed over to the dance floor; unfortunately, the set-up wasn't exactly newbie-friendly, even less-so for newbies who'd missed out on the introductory part. We basically spent the bulk of the lesson trying to play catch-up, and failing miserably; it would have been easier if the lesson had been a line dance, but since it was a couples dance it was slightly harder to follow. But after the lesson was over (and after the big sentimental "thanks to everyone who's supported us over the years" send-off), they started the music and opened up the dance floor for any and all styles of dance.

Now, personally, I'm not that big of a country-dance fan; it's much more difficult to act like a total spaz doing the two step. Oh, it can be done, don't get me wrong, but it's much less satisfying. We wound up staking out our own little corner of the dance floor to do a couple of line dances that we had learned at the Singles dance night, and we hopped in on a few of the big line dances, but we wound up spending a lot of our time just people watching. Some of the more interesting individuals included:

• Tanktop Pompadour: Now, this guy's dance moves held no real correlation to anything you've ever witnessed in the world of dance before, which is cool; you know I'm all about having a good time on the dance floor. But the unique dancing was amplified by his jet-black, foot-high, super-shiny pompadour (which brought his total height to maybe 5'6") and his black tank-top; this man was born to be a spectacle.
• The Competitive Duo: Decked out in matching outfits, this couple went through highly intricate and obviously much rehearsed dance routines all night long, which was kind of cool; however, their performance was marred by the looks of intense concentration branded on their faces. I had a hard time appreciating their dance moved because there was absolutely no spirit of enjoyment on their faces; it was like their every thought was focused on remembering the next move, and nothing else.
• The Horribly Uncomfortable Duo: Take the looks of concentration of the previous couple, increase it by a factor of a gazillion, but subtract all hints of style or grace, and you have this unfortunate pair; painful to watch, just painful.
• The Energizer: This guy had to have been in his late 60s or early 70s, but I doubt I saw him leave the dance floor more than a couple of times all night. Now, that would be impressive in and of itself if he had been dancing like a normal person, but I swear he put in double the footwork of anyone else on every dance he did; it exhausted me just watching him. Hope I have that much energy when I'm his age . . . oh, heck, I wish I had that much energy now. And, to top it all off, he was good. I mean, really, really good. I think we were all in awe.

After a few hours, we took a break from dancing and spectating and headed back to our table to eat some dessert and get to know each other a little better; most interesting tidbit I remember from this portion of the evening was that Scuba-girl's friend said that when he was younger he had wanted to grow up to be either a stunt-man or a clown (he shall henceforth be known as Stunt which, while not a great nickname, is slightly less cumbersome than "Scuba-girl's friend"), a revelation that made the Singles newbie shudder and reveal that clowns freak her out; I'm sure this information will come in handy some day.

While sitting there visiting, The Nickless One accidentally spilled some Mystery Punch (so dubbed because the girls spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what was in it) on her pants, but was unfazed since the liquid ran right off with no problem. She then began to expound on the wonders of her polyester pants and their liquid-resistant powers. Stunt commented that they needed to market these magical pants, and they proceeded to practice their infomercial spiel and discuss possible jingle lyrics. One of those "you had to be there" things, a fact driven home by the fact that poor Scuba-girl had gone off to get something to drink and missed out on the amazing pants' miracle feat, and so was puzzled by our continued entertainment by references to the magic pants; we started talking about the number of inside jokes we'd have after our evening at the Depot, and Stunt said that the next time he saw The Nickless One in public he was going to shout out "Hi, Magic Pants!" No sooner had those words escaped his lips then The Nickless One spun towards me, finger pointing in an accusatory manner, proclaiming in a loud voice "You are not naming me Magic Pants in your blog!"

To be honest, it hadn't even had time to cross my mind, but as soon as she said it, I knew that the perfect nickname had presented itself and then been snatched away. I offered to only refer to her by an acronym and not explain what it stood for. I suggested Incredible Magic Pants, or IMP, but she declined; Stunt was kind enough to expand the acronym so that it became CHIMP, which I thought fit in well with my blog monkey theme, but again, she declined. She did suggest turning "Incredible" into "Amazing," thus becoming CHAMP, but Stunt and I agreed that that just didn't have the same ring to it. I finally admitted defeat in the battle, until The Nickless One finally posted her permission to be officially dubbed Magic Pants.

Outside of the Magic Pants incident, the other highlight of my evening was probably towards the end of the evening when I did my usual demo of the dance moves of Parker residents (“here’s the Bubbles, here’s the Captain Ego, here’s the 3rd Floor R.A. . . .”) and Scuba-girl decided that each of them should imitate one of them, so that we had a little circle of Parker-dance-moves; that's right, I had finally infected the group with my goofy dance sensibilities.

My work there was done.