Dancing

 As you probably know, I was at an Anime Convention called Anime Spark this weekend (if you are slightly freaked out by "anime", just read it as "nerd"). I'll probably end up writing something about that tomorrow, but that's not what I'm talking about here (although I'll have to give a little bit of background anyway). Alright, here is the sweet and short of it (not really, but I wanted to use that phrase). Because my good friends Aubrey and Sara live relatively close to me (they're twins by the way; kind of cool), we carpooled for traveling back and forth from the convention. Now I'm in the video game room most of the time on Friday, because that is kind of what I do. But in the evening there was a dance in the larger panel room. Because I had never been to anything remotely like this before, I foolishly left my video game controller behind me and went into the dance anyway, purely for observational purposes, of course. While all the silly people danced I was perfectly content to stand and watch the shiny lights which were shining all over the place (seriously, have you seen all those bright colours? Fancy).

It was ballroom dancing, of course, with the songs being from anime which I had never heard of before (no surprise there). Aubrey and Sara ended getting a prize for being awesome, and that somehow activated a thing called "snowball". Basically this archaic law meant that they could choose whoever they wanted to dance with them. Sara, who was just trying to be nice and obviously was not aware of my hermit tendencies, used this rule on me. Not wanting to disrupt the flow of the dance (though my first urge was to run screaming for the exit), I went ahead and actually danced. In a ballroom setting. With a girl. Please take a second look at that last statement. Now go off and guarantee that I wasn't hacked and someone else is actually writing this. You done? Cool. Sara, who actually knew what was going on, placed my left hand on her shoulder and we danced for a few steps (I clumsily, of course, because I always was trying to go the wrong direction). After about twenty seconds it was over with and I retreated back to my fortress of solitude, namely the pillar which I was standing next to while staring at the pretty lights going all over the room.

To a lot of highschoolers this wouldn't seem like a weird thing at all. But remember, this is me we're talking about **list a large number of reasons why I'm not interested in this sort of thing**. But for about twenty seconds I was touching a girl's shoulder. That's kind of like a rebellion against all I am and all that I've ever stood for. Now, again, this by itself might not be a bad thing. Forget the scarring experience and move on. But this is the worst part of all: I didn't actually mind. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH. Not a good thing at all. Even for nerds, this shouldn't be a big deal. A small incident, forget about it. Move on. Go kill some orcs, or something.

And here it gets even better (note my sarcastic tone of voice back there. For you slow ones in the audience who just so happen to be keeping track, this means that things actually got worse.): I considered dancing of my own free will with either Aubrey or Sara after that first one. Now I'm not only not considering the practice of dancing as completely foul, but I actually wanted to try again. Goodness, that sounds dangerously close to something that normal people would want to do (and of course we wouldn't want that, right?). In fact, I went so far as to think the blasphemous thought that it might actually be cool to dance all evening. It's not like I had anything to prove.

I've recently been making a somewhat concentrated effort to be more mature, or at least try not to be immature on purpose. But this is different. Without even realizing it, I've broken the moral code on which I've stood for forever. Kind of a big deal. Yeah, the dance in itself was nothing. A pin drop, so to speak. But not despising every second, as I had only a few months before with the Pride and Prejudice play? That's a problem. A really, really large problem.  Don't get me wrong, even now I still don't think that I would like to be in dance for the play. In fact, I'm not sure how I was okay with that short little dance. Perhaps the convention air somehow changed how my brain functions? That's a scary, and yet not totally implausible thought.

So it seems like the logical thing to do in this situation would be for me to make a choice. Either give in that dancing isn't as bad as I had thought, or go play lots of video games. Suffice to say that I will always choose the latter. So yes, that short string of unhermit likeness is behind me. I've regained my composure, and I will continue on normally. I'm not changing my philosophical opinions at all on the matter. If I was given the opportunity to go dancing right now, I would run screaming for the hills. But still, it was weird, for a second, to not be myself.