Teach Mom How to Dougie

When I clean my kitchen, I listen to hip hop. I pop my iPod into its little stereo and Crank It Up. This makes an unpleasant task (dare I say?) fun, especially if I have recently downloaded some new music.

My latest batch was fresh from my summer trip to Vegas with a group of friends. I was Elvis-inspired after seeing the Elvis-themed Cirque de Soleil, and of course, there was my usual dose of hip hop. On our last evening in Vegas, we had gone to Rhumbar, the outdoor patio bar of the Mirage, where old school hip hop mingled with the latest radio hits. There were even professional dancers on the floor, to show you how it was done, and to motivate the crowd when it was getting lazy.

My friends and I are mothers, professional women, and how should I say it....? Old. The bouncer even confirmed this. After my husband forgot his ID, we were contemplating the logistics of a return back to our room, when I asked, on a whim, “Can't we just go in? I mean, he's old, right?” The bouncer nodded resignedly, like OK, Mom, you and Dad can come on in. We're not really old, to be clear, but our days of dancing in clubs are in the past. This was a major event for us, and oh, but it was lovely, the ice cubes of brightly colored cocktails tinkling into the night, the arches of feet screaming from shoes that shouldn't be worn, music that pulls you to the center of the room.

Just before we left for the evening, when Cali Swag District's “Teach Me How To Dougie” came on, one of the women in the crowd, accompanied by one of the club's professional dancers, took the center of the floor, to a chorus of cheers from the delighted circle around her. Every time I hear the song, it makes me think of her and envy her slick moves. It also calls up a fine evening with my own posse that seemed all youth and possibility. It's a happy little dance, you see, and it's not terribly difficult. As the song says, “Put your arms out front, lean side to side,” but doing it right is more complicated than that. There's a lot of shoulder and elbow action, followed by the smoothing of the hair (keepin' it fresh, Doug E Fresh-style).

It seemed like a good idea to practice this while cleaning my kitchen. After all, leaning side to side is the motion you need in order to wipe down a counter. That part is OK. It is less clear how high the elbows should go, and also during which beat you must stop and do the Hair Smooth. I never could figure out the “Halle Berry,” either, beyond the pretend hand mirror and powdering of the face. Without the hair move, it was distinctly lackluster. I eventually gave up and decided to do a thorough scrubbing of the sink. When I raised my eyes to the window, I saw our landscaper staring back at me with something between amusement and horror. I hoped fervently that I hadn't been singing, too, but well, sometimes you just NEED to sing along while dancing.

I looked like the biggest tool ever.

When you are young, dancing is an everyday part of life. The older you get, the more you need an occasion, a wedding maybe, to do it, or worse, lessons. I was waiting in line at a sandwich stand recently, and “Cha Cha Slide” came on. The fourteen-year-olds in front of me were doing the Cha Cha Slide joyfully, and without abandon. Grown-ups can't do this, although I have to admit to stomping two times, and doing the tiniest of cha chas, almost undetectable to the casual observer – a restrained little jig, if you will. We just don't have enough occasions when we're allowed to jump around and shake our heads without looking like escapees from the institution.

My children are very young, so they still think all kinds of dancing is fun. If Mommy or Daddy wants to dance, too, that is just awesome. This is going to end in the near future, as they realize just how lame we really are. I'm trying to remember in what ways our parents' generation shamed us, musically and rhythmically, because that's just what parents do, but I can't think of anything as embarrassing as doing the Dougie, or say, the Jerk, which is way worse than the dougie with all that weird foot stuff. A friend who has a high-school age son confessed to once doing that Soulja Boy dance while chaperoning a school dance, to the absolute mortification of her son. I hope she didn't do the Superman leap that's included, but that's really the fun part...  I can't imagine any parent on the floor back in the late 80s when I was in junior high, doing maybe the Cabbage Patch, the Roger Rabbit,or the Running Man. I mean, you would just have to transfer, right?

But parents my age are not beyond this. Maybe the hip hop culture grew too deep in our childhoods. It's too much to hope that our children will appreciate the potential compatibility of our musical tastes. Yet, I think, wasn't it possible in rock – the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, (God help us) Pink Floyd? Maybe they'll be happy to dig through our collections to find original Run DMC, the first Beastie Boys. Maybe? Right?

I think the possibility is there that getting older doesn't mean we have to start listening to Neil Diamond. But we absolutely must refrain from doing the Dougie where we can be seen.