Dancing in the Temple

It’s Spring Break at last in Little Town. To celebrate, we went last night to Harry’s Lounge Emporium, where the infamous Whole Damn Band was playing. At home today, with no pressing appointments, classes, committee work, or meetings, I’ve had time to reflect on things one should avoid at my age:

1. Interpretive Dance. Having never learned to dance properly, and being a child of the hippie “we’re all beautiful” era of wild abandon, I dance in a style that’s a bizarre combo of Egyptian temple dancers, Elaine from Seinfeld, Goldie Hawn on Laugh-In, and someone with voluntary muscle spasms. At my age, one night of this sort of dancing can result in a week of misaligned hips, cramped calf muscles, a torqued upper torso, a strange sensation in one little toe, and several chiropractic co-pays.

2. Interpretive Dance in a lounge frequented by one’s students. This has two possible outcomes: students who create traffic hazards when they fall on the floor laughing hysterically, or students who create traffic hazards when they freeze, horrified, in the middle of a room.

3. Sambuca. This Italian anise-y, syrupy liquid, like so many things in life, is deceptively sweet and extremely dangerous. The recommended antidote is a fuzzy blankie, absolute motionlessness, 4000 mg. of Vitamin C, and a Harry Potter marathon.

4. Staying up past one’s increasingly early bedtime. This causes otherwise normal adults to growl and snarl like cornered rabid animals.

5. Thinking you know more than your mother. She was right all along about milktoast and weak tea for convalescing after a night on the town. You may think the bean burritos look good the next day, but you’ll pay, and your mother will grin.

6. Giving advice to younger colleagues. When a perky colleague says she’s just turned 39, buy her a beer and toast her youthful brilliance. Avoid saying things like, “Wait till you hit 40,” “You aint seen nothin’ yet,” “It’s all downhill from here,” or “You’re lucky they’ve made such strides in hip replacement surgery.”

Tomorrow, Ray and I leave for a few days in the Black Hills to visit friends and sneak in a little R & R. Back in the day, as the kids say, we would have thrown a clean shirt, a bag of sunflower seeds, and a few cassette tapes in a backpack and hit the road. But at our age, we’ve been making lists and packing for days: a duffel of food, treats, and fluffy toys for the dogsitter, enough clothes for both of us to change eight times daily for several months, a bag of assorted vitamins & supplements, a bag of toiletries, a backpack of papers to grade, a cooler of yogurt for digestive health, along with anything that might spoil in the fridge if we leave it, our favorite pillows, an emergency car/first-aid kit, camera, iPods, Nintendo DS (for brain age exercises), knitting, assorted chargers, and a garbage bag full of comfortable shoes. Which leads me to one more thing to avoid…

7. Traveling.