It's Harder to Dance than You Think

Lately, I've been trying to moonwalk.  As is most of the rest of the world, apparently, after Michael Jackson's sudden death shocked his music and moves back to center Earth stage.

There's even a fan site featuring video of everything from humans to cats to stuffed bears trying out the signature shimmy.  I see the flashing video clips and think: "That's easy; I can do that."

Growing up an Amish-Mennonite, I had no radio, no TV, couldn't listen to music with a beat, sang hymns acapella in church.  Because of this, I wasn't really aware of popular culture until the mid-90's, around the time I turned 21.

But I wasn't the typical Amish-Mennonite child: my parents' mission move from their grassy, faith-filled community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (the heart of Amish horse-and-buggy country) put me scraping my knees on the sidewalks in a Washington DC 'hood.

From there, even I couldn't avoid the super-stardom of Michael Jackson.  Playmates and schoolmates talked incessantly about him.  I remember some hoopla about a glove.  And of course they all tried to make their feet moonwalk.

I didn't.  You see, in the black neighborhood of Kenilworth, white men couldn't, it was said, do two things: jump, and dance.  And not only was I white, I was the son of a preacher-man who thought shaking one's booty was rather more like sin than like fun.  My booty, and my feet, stayed still.

As I got older, however, and my cultural world widened, I also started to move my hips a bit.  Just a little, to and fro, just now and then.  It felt good to loose the body.  Though I mostly danced when I was alone.  Like my semester in Oxford, England, where I didn't feel at home until I had cut loose, just me and the music in my head, on an empty street at 2 in the morning.

Here in Burundi, I had a very different 2 a.m. chance to dance.  A nightclub next to my hotel was blasting live music late into the night.  Though I had gone to bed around 10, I was still awake at 2, and the music just kept pounding.  I went to see what in heck was going on over there.

With my limited French, I asked how long this music would continue.  "We will be dancing till dawn!" a spritely manager said.  Uh-oh.

I managed to communicate that, in the hotel next door, I couldn't sleep.  He looked at me.  "Well come and dance, then!" he said.

I had to laugh.

I didn't dance, though.  Sometimes, the timing just isn't right.  And, like in Kenilworth, I'm still a white man in a land that's strange to me.

I've been learning lately how, just because I've jumped to a new place and a new culture before, it doesn't mean the next jump is easier.

When I finally tried the moonwalk, soon after Jackson's demise, my feet felt awkward, alien.

It's harder to dance than you think.