That One Time I Was Rad
Because, yes, this Nerd can dance.
Spring 1982
3rd Grade
I can’t believe Queen Kristine invited me to her birthday party!
Me! The super-nerd.
Kristine is tall, blonde, and blue-eyed—the coolest girl in our class with Farrah Fawcett hair and super neat clothes. Her best friend is Suzy, who used to be my best friend until kindergarten when she became Queen Bee and I became Harty-Farty. But then Kristine moved into town, so now Suzy is more like Princess. She’s teensy and super cute with her perfect bouncy curls and eyes that are also big and blue. When those two girls are together with their court, it’s like the Charlie’s Angels just walked in.
So how am I here with them at the Queen’s birthday party? It’s a pretty big party, so I guess that explains it.
For dinner, we have pizza and cake and ice cream, then ooh-and-ahh over all her presents. After that, we put on our jammies and brush our teeth so we’re ready for the slumber part of the slumber party.
But first, it’s time for the dance contest.
When Kristine announces that, all the air in my lungs swells up and freezes because—as you know—dancing is my favorite thing in the whole wide world.
But nobody here knows that.
Ever since that day Henry Anderson caught me strutting around like a Toreodore through my living room window, I have kept the curtains closed whenever I dance. Sometimes he strikes mean, jeering disco-poses when I’m at their house playing with Johnny, but he must not have told anybody about what he saw, or for sure the other kids would be doing it, too.
Nope, I think my secret is safe. Nobody knows that I dance every morning before school, and any other chance I get the house to myself. And in the bathroom when I’m supposed to be showering. And in the basement on my roller skates. And whenever we visit my cousin Jill who is a real, live dancer with costumes and tap shoes and ballet slippers and everything.
One by one, the girls all pick songs and dance to them. We cheer and clap and gush and squeal. Kristine both lip-syncs and dances to Hit Me With Your Best Shot. She knows all the lyrics by heart, and has moves to go with every one of them. I would never be able to play this kind of music in my house. My dad would call it “noise.”
But I did get to watch Kristine and Suzy dance to Pat Benetar and Joan Jett down in the basement here last summer. For a couple weeks, they thought I might be cool enough to hang out with them.
I’m not. Whenever school starts back up, everybody always remembers that.
So I lurk at the back of the crowd and cheer the other girls on. Suzy picks I Love Rock ‘n Roll, and Kim picks Funkytown, which we all go bananas over. Carin picks some song I’ve never heard, but most of the other girls sure have because they sing along.
That happens a lot with Kristine’s music, which is why I hold back so long. Because in between dancers, when we all look through the records and tapes, I can’t find anything I know well enough to dance to—especially not in front of these girls. There aren’t any Supremes or ABBA. No Donna Summer, Juice Newton or classical records. Most of the singers are people I’ve only sorta heard of, but none of the song titles I know make me want to groove.
Eventually, everybody has gone except Gabby and Lynn, and there is no way we’ll be able to pry either of those girls off the couch. They shake their heads with huge eyes, and it’s not the shy “no” that some of the others did before we all pushed them into taking their turn. Gabby and Lynn really mean it.
Kristine takes one last roll call. This is it. My last chance. The last dance. I’m the only other one who hasn’t gone. When she asks me if I want to take a turn before we all vote, I give a shy nod and edge toward her. “I—I would go, but I don’t know what song to pick. I don’t know most of this music.”
Her eyes narrow in thought. “Hmm,” she says, hunting through the records.
“Ooh!” Suzy says. “I know!” When she finds the one she wants, of course it has a sassy cheerleader on the cover.
Kristine’s mouth goes huge with an excited gasp. “Oh, yeah!” A bunch of the girls squeal over it, but I have no idea what it is. “This is so rad,” she says, pulling the record out.
If she’s calling it “rad,” it must really be something. It’s her latest word, which means it’s becoming everybody else’s word, too.
I don’t really use that word. That’s Cool Girl Stuff.
I bet this music is, too. Has to be, with a cheerleader on the cover. Some of the popular girls have had tiny cheer uniforms since we were in kindergarten. They followed the real cheerleaders around in parades and have their own pompoms and everything.
Me? No way. You have to be pretty and cool and popular to be a cheerleader. For some reason, everybody seems to agree that this will be the perfect song for me to dance to. I’m not so sure about that, but I decide to trust them, taking the stage in the middle of the living room. All eyes are on me as Kristine puts the record on.
She glances at me. “Ready?”
I gulp. My hands are damp, and my eyes are as round as that black vinyl that’s about to start playing. My heart is racing almost as hard as it did that day when Henry caught me dancing.
But if I ever want to be a Solid Gold Dancer anywhere other than in my living room with the curtains closed, I have to get used to letting people watch me, so I nod.
She puts the needle down.
A slick beat kicks out through the room. My shoulders catch it, popping up and down from side to side. I add my head as I get a feel for it. Thankfully there are a bunch of Christmas lights strung up for this party. All the other lights are off. I’m glad, because I can barely see anybody’s faces. Only their silhouettes, which makes this easier. Their heads bop to the beat, too.
When the cheer-chant start up, some of them throw back their heads and belt it out. They start clapping along, and that sparks my blood. They love this song, I can feel it already. I think I do, too, because it’s got a great beat.
Now my feet HAVE to move. I pony-step side-to-side, and I think I’ve got it. I close my eyes, because…it’s happening. I’ve never heard this song but that never matters when I’m in the groove. I’m like a puppet to the music. It tells me exactly what to do and when it’s about to switch.
A girl’s voice starts singing. I can’t really make out all the lyrics, don’t fully understand some of the others, but the words I do catch tell me her mood. She’s bold. Fun. As sassy as she looked on that cover. I imagine what it would be like to be a cheerleader. To be pretty. Popular. Cool.
To be “rad.”
When she gets to the chorus, I go back to pony-hopping and bopping around the room. More girls are singing along now, and I let my hair bounce from side to side, pretending that it’s long enough to put into a ponytail and flip around.
By the time the second verse comes on, I’ve really got it. I understand how the song is put together now, so I can really let go. My legs kick up and fly. My pointy finger shoot sparks, and my hands swat off sass. My hips do things way too old for me and no, Mickey, I do not understand either. But I sway them anyway as I strut and vamp and point and grin.
I am a love-struck dancin’ queen all through the chorus, and then that hard, slick beat comes back. With my hands clapping over my head, I lunge back and forth. When they clap along with me, my heart soars up into the stars.
The chant starts up again.
Oh, Mickey, you’re so fine!
You’re so fine your blow my mind!
Hey, Mickey! Clap-clap, clap-clap!
Hey, Mickey! Clap-clap, clap-clap!
I’m right in front of them now, lip-synching and pointing at each one in turn. We clap and chant together, and our smiles are so huge. I’m not really dancing anymore, just side-stepping and egging them on because this is the coolest feeling I’ve ever had.
This really is rad!
They’re playing with me.
I’m playing with them.
We’re playing together and it’s everything I always dreamed it would be! Over and over, we yell that chant until the song tells me it’s about to change again—when the beat gets all fast and winds up like it’s about hit a homer. Or like one of those boxers in silky shorts, winding up his fisticuffs before the big Ka-POW!
When it it hits, I bounce off to the middle of our stage again to go nuts. Their clapping and singing and especially their smiles drive me harder and bigger. I’m a daredevil tonight just like when I’m alone in my living room and when it ends so abruptly—
I blink hard.
Oh, no! My face has to be lit up brighter than those Christmas lights.
For a second, my heart thinks about jumping up into my throat to choke me forever, so I quick vamp into the most dramatic pose in the universe. My mouth is open in a big “Ta-DAH!” grin.
I hold it. Hold my breath. Pray. Gosh, I hope I haven’t just wrecked everything I did by botching the ending, but that just tickles my audience even more. Instead of jeering at me, they only cheer harder and jump up to laugh in that way that is full of hugs and delight.
I can barely catch my breath, and not because I danced so hard. Usually if my classmates are all circled around me, it is a very, very bad day. Them wanting to touch me is the worst. But tonight they’re all squealing and smiling and cheering, wanting to pat me on the back and even hug me. I can tell before they vote—I’ve won the contest. It’s unanimous.
“I can’t believe you’ve never heard that song before,” Kimberly says, and everybody nods.
“It’s on the radio all the time,” Suzy says.
All I can do is shrug. I like playing records or the 8-track way better than listening to the radio, because there are no commercials and I can dance to my favorite songs over and over and over and over, as many times in a row as I want.
“Wow,” they keep gushing, and “I can’t believe it,” and “We had no idea you could dance like that!”
Grinning, I blush and nod because I don’t know what to say about it except, “Dancing is my favorite thing.”
My heart is so huge I can barely breathe around it. I want to hug every one of them and spend the whole rest of the night in a big puppy-pile together. That’s what chants were made for. And cheerleaders and pompoms and circling around somebody. This is the way it’s supposed to be—all of us together. All of us laughing and hugging and sharing smiles. I suddenly know in my bones and my guts. I know to the bottom of my twinklie toes…
This is what I want to do for my whole life!
As you can see, I did become a professional dancer and entertainment performing monkey-girl.
I also became a cheerleader. When I tried out for the squad in the final weeks of sixth grade, it didn’t start out as my intention. I never would have tried out at all—that’s Cool Girl Stuff—except for one quirky smirk of the Fates.
The newest member of Queen Kristine’s Court didn’t have a partner for tryouts. Willow remembered how easily I’d caught on to that Hula dance we did in fourth grade, and I was pretty athletic, so she asked me if I would be her partner.
Her eyes were huge with dread over the prospect of doing those tryouts alone, and I’ve always been as much of a sucker for a person in need of help as I have been for dance—or anything close to it. So I shrugged and said, “Sure.”
Not like I thought I would make the squad. I mean, the notion was laughable. Wasn’t it? I was a four-eyed freak. A homely nerd. I was the biggest Loser with a capital L, and I’d been consoling myself with my academic accolades and my athletic accomplishments in place of belonging for years. I expected that, no matter how well I could do the moves, there was no chance I would ever be picked. Cheerleaders are—
Well, we know what cheerleaders are, and I was NOT.
Probably exactly what my five cool, pretty classmates had in mind when we all traipsed down to the cafeteria and placed ourselves before those outgoing senior girls.
As I hid in the back listening to the instructions, I couldn’t help thinking about that night they’d said I should dance to Hey Mickey. I didn’t want to admit it, but I couldn’t help that tiniest flicker of hope inside me. It whispered that, since Willow had asked me—and she could have asked anybody else—maybe my greatest wishes weren’t as far out of my reach as I’d thought. Maybe there really was a smidge of Rad in me, and maybe if they saw me dance again they might remember.
If not, at least maybe I would remember.
As it turns out…
…cheerleading is nothing more than musical theater: memorize the lines, enunciate and project, portray the proper character, and perform the steps as though people in the nosebleed seats need to see them.
For me, this is as easy as failing to keep my cowlick straight (Aqua Net and all).
From: Infiltrating the Base
At tryouts, I gave it my all, because…that’s what you do at a final exam. Afterwards, I jock-walked my nerd-self home, laughing all the way—hah-hah-hah! Because although I was proud of myself for knocking yet another test out of the park, I was also 100% certain that Monday’s announcement would bring yet another popularity contest and another opportunity for the Court to rub my nose in what a reject I was.
But Monday arrived…
*cue spooky music*
…the outgoing senior class cheerleaders descend from on high, a matched set of four in their orange-and-black uniforms. They are tall and leggy—dare I say, willowy? Like Queenie and Princess, they are gorgeous Amazons or pixies with perfect, permed hair and gleaming smiles. A beatific glow hums around them, shining sunlight into our shadowy grade school halls. They come bearing an orange-tipped carnation.
Only one.
For me.
Yeahhhh…do I have to tell you how well that went down?
Toldja. I was rad for one night, and one night only. Even that cheerleading uniform couldn’t change my Reject Status. In fact, for a few years it only made things worse, because none of my classmates made any squad until we were sophomores. By then I was Miss Cheer Thang.1
Hard to believe what a dramatic impact one little orange flower could have. It changed the trajectory of my life from seventh grade to the day I graduated from high school.
In fact, it changed the trajectory of my whole life, period.
UP NEXT: The Ugly Duckling signs up for her first college dance class where she hopes to finally, at long last, learn that she was a Swan all along - UGLY DUCKLINGS, SWANS & BIRDS OF DIFFERENT FEATHERS
© 2023 Hartebeast
Early 80’s Geek Out:
Farrah Fawcett hair - like the Charlie’s Angels just walked in
Oh, yeah. “Neat.” As in: neato. Cool, hip, rad, awesome, bitchin’. Not like…clean and tidy.
All my DanceStory adventures can be found IN THIS SECTION
Solid Gold Dancer, Baby
Fall 1980 Second Grade A teensy town in Northern Minnesota, pop. 333 From my bedroom, I hear the front door go ka-thump! I do a little jig. At last! Free! My fifteen minutes of bliss. And how will I spend it? Doy, dancing! Mom is a teacher’s aide at the school, so she has to be there fifteen minutes before I do. She told me goodbye before she left, and I pret…
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“I gulp. My hands are damp, and my eyes are as round as that black vinyl that’s about to start playing.” — such a good description.
Such a awesome tale of you strutting your stuff in front of the ‘cool’ girls! :)