Tap, tap, tap...

by - Thursday, January 22, 2009

This story is inspired by Elle Bee's Dear Facebook post*... and the fact that I heard Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" in the car today.

Back in the good old days of junior high, I was a bit of a wallflower. Okay... lets be honest... I was a lot of a wallflower. I never had a boy "crush" on me (well, if they did, they certainly didn't show it) because, since I am being honest... I was really a vagina away from being one of the boys. Well, a vagina and overly developed breasts.

I was a tomboy. Through and through. But when it came to the night of the junior high video dances (do they still do that?), although I didn't ever go with anyone, I did have my fair share of dances.

Even if I was taller than all the boys. Oh yeah, did I mention that I was also freakishly tall (well, I still am... but it was even more noticeable back when we were all 14)?

Back in the day, the boys lined one side of the gym and the girls the other. It was like a giant game of "Red Rover, come over"... but nobody wanted to ever cross half court - at least not for the first couple of songs.

Then, when "Bohemian Rhapsody" came on, we would all gather in a circle and head bang like the best of them. I was particularly awesome at this because of my long hair. Lets face it... if I rocked one dance move... it was the head bang.

But I digress.

I would dance to a couple of slow songs... nothing major since I think the goal of slow dancing was to see how far you could keep the member of the opposite sex away from you strictly by keeping your arms straight out... but throughout the night a couple of boys would take pity on me and we would dance - probably to something by Mr. Big or Boys II Men.

After hours and hours of fun, 10:00 would roll around. The hour in which all junior high kids apparently become pumpkins... if you were to look outside there would be a parking lot full of parents sitting in their cars, waiting for us to stream out of the gym... cause of course, none of us could drive yet.

But before we left, we would have one last song. And, tradition stated that it must be "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin.

Now... the fact that I didn't have a boyfriend usually meant that I would just start heading for the coat check at this time, in the hopes that I didn't get the dreaded "tap, tap, tap".

Why you ask? Why would getting your coat be more interesting than this "tap, tap, tap" I talk of?

Because that "tap, tap, tap" was none other than Nathan (the geeky boy with the red hair and glasses) finding you in a crowd. No matter how you tried to dodge him, his fingers always found your shoulder to tap on... it was like he had the longest arms in the entire world. That boy could tap you on the shoulder from 20 paces, I swear... and then there was the obligation to dance with him...

To the longest song ever recorded. And don't try and dispute me on that one until you have danced the entire eight minutes and two seconds with Nathan.

* Nathan and I became Facebook friends just before Christmas, and I swear - that night I had a nightmare in which "Stairway to Heaven" played in the background, just like horror movie music. Poor Nathan hasn't changed a bit...

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4 Comments

  1. I love that something I wrote inspired this post. This post is amazing!

    Before the end of your post, I was thinking about Stairway to Heaven and how it was the one song that you hoped the boy you liked (or at least thought was cute) would ask you to dance with because it was the longest song in history. Also, it's the song that makes you decline boys like Nathan, when usually, for a shorter song, you might just give in to boost his ego.

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  2. In my junior high days we didn't rock it to bohemian rhapsody or stairway to heaven which is devastating. It was the macarena and celine dion's whatever-that-song-is-from-titanic with splashes of Nsync, BSB, and of course the spice girls...

    I feel ripped off.

    there was, of course, boys lining one side of the cafeteria and girls along the otherside...but that's a given, no?

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  3. ha ha ha that made me laugh. Stairway is like THE longest song too, besides paradise by the dashboard light!

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  4. We had a "Nathan" of our own. The worst was when something happened halfway through "Stairway to Heaven," so they restarted it. It was just mean of the DJ to start it from the beginning. And then everyone kept telling me that they wanted to save me, but didn't.

    Sorry, roamed down the reading list, and had to comment here too.

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