Snoqualmie

Dance magic dance.

I just spent half an hour dancing wildly and gleefully in the middle of Sproul Plaza to music that nobody but me could hear. Everyone walking by was either looking around trying to figure out what the hell was going on, or trying to see around me to watch the poetry slam going on on the Sproul Hall steps, and I am here to tell you that neither effort was successful. The whole experience was fucking beautiful.

I expect you will not be surprised when I tell you that it was a co-op publicity stunt. This is balls-to-the-wall recruiting season both for the university and for the co-ops -- high schoolers in flocks touring the campus, open dinners at all the houses for curious freshmen to emerge from their dorms and gawk, that kind of thing. My housemate Jordan, who works for the co-op central office in some kind of publicity-related capacity, perceived quite accurately that the best way to give people an appropriate picture of the co-ops would be to do something utterly ridiculous. So he drummed up a respectable handful of Kingmanites and others to show up on Sproul Plaza at noon today, put on our headphones, and dance incomprehensibly while handing out fliers for house tours and open dinners.

We danced. My god, did we ever dance. I'm not sure I've ever had so much fun in my life, and yes, I had my clothes on. It's strange, because I'm not known for being willing to dance in public. Put me in a club full of people dancing, or even my house during a party, and I'll shuffle awkwardly for a few minutes and then leave at the earliest opportunity. But if I'm the only one hearing the music, then I'm the only one who knows how to dance to it. It's not like everyone else is going to be doing the same dance in the same rhythm except me -- everyone dancing to that song, being 100% composed of me, is going to be flailing and wiggling and leaping around and singing out of key in the same semi-retarded way.

Which is precisely what I just did, minus the singing out of key (I didn't want to actually disrupt the poetry slam people). I put on my enormous dorky headphones and listened to the Clash and Duran Duran and Franz Ferdinand and Elvis Costello and shook my booty and flailed my arms and jumped around and tripped over my own feet and got sweaty and exhausted and deliriously happy. And my ratio of time spent being that happy person uninhibitedly enjoying herself to time spent wishing I were that person has just gotten a little bit better. Thank you, Jordan.