At last month's winter formal, Principal Jim Bennett of Lemoore Union High School saw something shocking -- boys and girls, some 17 and many even younger, shaking their slender, youthful hips, flexing their taught, muscular buttocks, and grinding their brittle, barely-formed pelvises together in rhythmic undulations of hormonal frenzy. And as you can imagine, the sight was too much for him to bear.

In response, Bennett made his students the following offer: Either stop your freak dancing or you won't dance at all. At least not at a school-sponsored event for the remainder of the academic year.

It's a tale as old as time itself, or at least as old as music and genitals -- 112 years, to be specific. Bennett calls it "freak dancing." In my day we called it "Lambada," or "The Forbidden Dance." In my parents' day it was called "Nigger Jigging." And in my their parents' day it was also called "Nigger Jigging." And for my money, no matter what you call it, it's a natural expression of burgeoning sexuality and a safe and healthy outlet for it.

At least that's what I tell the junior girls when I sneak into prom and lay some moves on them.

Seriously, though, the worst thing freak dancing leads to is an uncomfortable moment involving a hastily untucked shirt, a couple of fists jammed into pants pockets, and an awkward, wood-concealing shuffle off the dance floor. The students of Lemoore Union could easily be sticking their faces in a bag full of acetone and poking one another in the brown eye. And telling you what that leads to -- permanently crossed eyes, fecal incontinence, and rectal prolapse -- is preaching to the choir.

I can't put it any better than senior and student body president Zohra Lakhani:

Students save up all year to buy a dress or rent a tuxedo and buy flowers for the prom. To crush everyone's dreams by forbidding them to shake dat ass and work dat booty is not fair.

Analogcabin @ 2:00 PM
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