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Spring 2011 : Fail
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Oregon Humanities: Spring 2011
Footloose
When I was twelve years old, my mother brought home one of her black students from the inner-city school where she taught. Mom had this idea that being well rounded also meant learning how to be cool. It was the early ’90s. A decade of movies such as Flashdance, Footloose, and Fame had convinced us that even smalltown tots could aspire to great feats of great feet.
The young man’s name was Delano, and he had Bobby Brown hair and MC Hammer pants. He was going to teach my sister and me hip-hop, which was just about to crossover to mainstream America. We knew nothing of coolness, but we recognized it instantly. We had our share of tolerance and diversity training in elementary school, but I didn’t know any actual black people (that’s what happens on the strange educational island of suburbia). I always took those dance lessons to heart, though, since they reinforced something I felt naturally—that my family was boring.
The running man seemed the best place to start. We danced in the backyard, queuing up the only two cassettes we owned: MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” and Kriss Kross’s “Jump!” Standing in our lily-white Keds, we watched Delano as he ran in place to MC Hammer, pumping his arms forward and backward with the beat and embellishing the movement by craning his neck. For several minutes, we stood flabbergasted in sight of his greatness.
My brave sister threw herself into it. She looked a little like tumbleweed set adrift in a gale. I always had a better sense of rhythm than my sister—must have been the years of classic piano—so I was just a tagalong there to get a jump on my game. But I didn’t fare much better. My shoes slipped around in every direction and to a beat all my own. Eventually, we had the basic movement down—kind of.
In later sessions, we moved on to the Cabbage Patch and the Roger Rabbit, and some moves Delano made up. At some point, Mom, who was watching the whole time from the kitchen window, must have given up on us. Or maybe Delano decided that $10 an hour was not enough to lure him back to the suburbs.
It took me years before I understood that cool couldn’t really be cultivated. But it wasn’t a massive fail for anyone involved. Delano was a born teacher. His tolerance for bad dancers? That’s something I have taken with me always.
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Oregon Humanities magazine examines topics of broad public interest from a variety of perspectives and approaches. Recent issues of this publication have focused on stuff, nostalgia, and civility. Through good and thoughtful writing, Oregon Humanities magazine enriches our understanding of important subjects and stimulates conversation and reflection among readers, their friends, families, colleagues, and neighbors.
Contributors
Amanda Waldroupe
Amanda Waldroupe is a freelance journalist living in Portland. Whenever she fails, she buckles down and tries, tries again.
Debra Gwartney
Debra Gwartney is the author of the 2009 memoir Live Through This, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Oregon Book Award, and the PNBA award. She is currently working on a memoir about growing up in the West and the heritage of Narcissa Whitman, a project for which she received a research grant from the American Antiquarian Society. Debra lives on the McKenzie River with her husband, Barry Lopez, and is on the nonfiction faculty at Pacific University.
John Holloran
John Holloran lives in Portland and teaches at Oregon Episcopal School, where he is the chair of the history department. His last essay for Oregon Humanities was “Under a Spell” (Summer 2009).
Kim Stafford
Kim Stafford is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College and author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Elegant Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft. This essay is a section from his book-in-progress, 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do.
Kristy Athens
Kristy Athens’ nonfiction and short fiction have been published in a number of magazines, newspapers, and literary journals, most recently High Desert Journal, Eclectic Flash, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and Five Fishes Journal.
Matthew Stadler
Matthew Stadler is a writer and editor in Portland. He writes about cities and urbanism for journals including Volume, Netherlands Architecture Bulletin, Domus, and Camerawork. His book about urbanism, Deventer, is forthcoming from 010 Uitgevrij, in Rotterdam. In 2009 he cofounded Publication Studio (http://www.publicationstudio.biz) in Portland.
Sarah Gilbert
Sarah Gilbert is writing a book about mothers looking for emotional healing in food. In February, she decided to begin homeschooling her eldest son.
Susan Meyers
After growing up selling corndogs and cotton candy at carnivals up and down the West Coast, Susan Meyers extended her gypsy lifestyle by spending several years in Latin American before coming home to the Pacific Northwest. Her work has recently appeared in CALYX, Dogwood, Terra Incognita, and The Minnesota Review, and it has been the recipient of several awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship. She teaches writing at Oregon State University.
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