Grindin'

I grew up in far northwest Iowa. It was and still is a friendly and safe place to live, work, and raise a family. It also was and still is a very socially and religiously conservative place.

I could give you a number of examples of just how conservative (including how they keep electing Steve King to Congress), but one of my favorites was how one of the local parochial high schools canceled a dance once years ago, because the students were dancing too close to each other at the previous one. I always joked (still do) about how that community later implemented a ban on kissing, because they were afraid someday it might lead to dancing! Yes, it was close to a real-life version of the movie 'Footloose'.

It's 20+ years later, and while NW Iowa is still a very conservative place, it's not as repressed as it once was. With TV and technology, it simply can't stop societal evolution. However, this week I was reminded that no matter what, there will always be someone trying to stop that evolution.

Case in point, this week a parent in my own public school district (Johnston, Iowa, a suburb of big bad Des Moines) complained to high school administrators about the dancing they've seen at school functions. That parent had chaperoned a fall dance at the school, and wrote to school officials claiming that what he saw would best be described as "a sex act, albeit with clothes on."

Specifically, the dancing he's referring to is known as 'grinding'. Basically, it's guys dancing behind girls and rubbing their frontsides against the girls' backsides. The fact that this parent would use the term 'sex act' to describe this makes me think he has either an incredibly boring or incredibly interesting sex life - but I bet it's more like incredibly boring.

The best part about this story is that, just like my kissing/dancing joke, now everybody can poke fun at the parents and school administrators. It doesn't matter if they have a point or not. A Des Moines T-shirt shop has already sold more than 100 "Johnston: Straight Grindin'" tees, and if I was a student there I'd definitely get one, too.

This story certainly made me hark back to my cloistered youth, and laugh at the idea that today some people still think that controlling dancing is critical to controlling other teenage behavior. Aside from 'Footloose' it all makes me think of one other movie. In 'Jurassic Park', the Jeff Goldblum character/scientist is not convinced that the dinosaur population can be controlled via gender genetics, because in the end, "Nature finds a way."

He means that eventually, the dinosaurs will start kissing, and it will lead to dancing, and soon societal evolution will run amok!