HOW TO DANCE LIKE EVERYBODY IS WATCHING

...Even if awkward, gangly, and sweaty has been your style for as long as you can remember.

- NICK FULLER GOOGINS

MIDDLE SCHOOL DANCES in the Massachusetts suburbs, circa mid-1990s, were on Friday nights. My friends would all be there at the gym, along with every girl we were crushing on. But not me. While the rest of the seventh grade was getting down to Bon Jovi, TLC, and the “Macarena,” I'd be at home, on the couch, watching The X-Files with my brother. My guy friends would call from the school pay phone to give me a hard time. I'd hear music in the background. Bass. Laughter. It sounded fun. But in the end, I'd always say something like, “You guys know I can’t miss X-Files.” The truth was more complicated. I did love The X Files. But much more so, I was terrified of dancing.

Social scientists claim that we human beings possess eight different intelligences in varying degrees. Some of us have high logical and mathematic intelligence; others excel at music; some have a strong interpersonal, social intelligence; and so on. I was raised by a family of readers and gabbers, so it’s no shock that I developed so-called “linguistic-verbal” intelligence that has led to my becoming a teacher and a writer. And although I loved playing hockey and football as a kid, and working with my hands at the town garage, alas, my least-developed intelligence is what the experts call “bodily-kinesthetic” awareness. Nonexperts would know this by seeing me at my friend’s backyard wedding reception: “Oh, that fool can’t dance.”