If there is one sacred rule that has been passed through the ages since Moses descended from the mountain, it is this:
The boys don’t want to be here, and they will try with all their adolescent might to only dance with 3 or 4 girls all night long. While I grant you dancing with J and the C twins would be machismo bliss, it is not the way the game is to be played.
This society hostess, while ancient, was no fool. She had ways of shuffling the deck to keep us off balance.
Her favorite was the numbers. Two sets of discs with numbers. Boys draw the blue ones, girls the red ones. You find your match and dance. This would be followed by the partial shuffle: the boys put all their numbers back in the hat, then draw again. Another variation had her calling out different numbers: Number 6 boy, number 14 girl……til all couples were on the floor.
‘The sudden quick stop’: she stops the music, then all boys are to turn around and dance with the girl behind you–speed dating minus hormones. This caused giggling, cause not everyone danced so precisely; if the girl ‘behind you’ was a CEO or someone else from rich town, you’d have two boys jockeying. You’d better settle that fast, fellas, cause if Mrs. K steps in, both of youse will be shit outa luck!
Spotlight dance: various spotlights would be turned off, then on. Anyone under that light, exit stage left, as Snagglepuss said.
With over half of the room from rich town, she couldn’t say that school X boys must dance with school Y girls. So she would stage the multiplication dance. One couple starts. She claps, both partners get new partners, and so on til the floor is filled.
or by name: ‘All girls with the last name of A through D, find a boy with the same letter (we wore name tags, so no funny business worked here).
There never seemed to be an equal boy/girl count. This meant some boys got to skip a dance (yay! Time to sit and make rude gestures at your friends), or worse–some poor girls from another school wound up sitting alone, lepers at Cinderella’s ball. This is dedicated to all those girls from other schools who we went out of our way to ignore:
And of course, the dreaded Ladies Choice’
Ah yes, the mere mention of the words tightened testicles. Now girls got to serve a dose of icy chilled vengeance. However, without fail this degenerated into some girls milling around, unable to decide who to inflict the ignore damage on or who they hated less.
And 2 or 3 elimination dances every night: “All girls with white shoes, you’re out…………..All boys with Brown suits, you’re out.” Our resident wits had a bunch of immature suggestions like “all boys who don’t want to be here,” “all girls with no chest,” or “all boys who haven’t masturbated today”. Please tell me, o reader, you were never that pathetic.