Gettin' Jiggy with JBU

A couple of weeks ago, the board of trustees revised the rules at John Brown University and guess what? Dancing on campus is now legal. This article tells the story and includes a list of other Arkansas colleges -- including Harding -- where dancing is banned.

The whole dancing thing has been on my mind lately because this Sunday night, we're having Hay Daze. This is a kind of fall gathering for our youth group that includes a square dance. Chad even hired a professional caller. In fact, Chad is in charge of the whole thing. This is funny to me (funnier than square dancing is by itself) because Chad was one of those Church of Christ kids who had to sit out of square dancing in P.E. I was one of those kids, too. It seems like a lot of people who grew up in the CoC heritage have "I-got-pulled-out-of-square-dancing-in 5th-grade" type stories.

Here's mine: In 6th grade, square dance week was coming up in P.E. My parents didn't really have a problem with square dancing, but the preacher at my church pulled his daughter out and my dad, the youth minister, felt like he should do the same to keep peace at the office. ("Peace" was a relative term in his office situation, but that's another blog.) So I had to sit out. I didn't mind missing the square dancing, but I did mind a girl in my class asking what in the world was wrong with square dancing that my parents wouldn't let me do it. "You're going to flunk P.E.!" she said. That wasn't true -- I guess the P.E. teacher was used to CoC kids skipping out on square dancing every year so she was cool with it. A couple of days later, the girl came up to me and said she was sorry she had bugged me about it. I got the feeling her mother had one of those "You should respect other people's beliefs, even when their beliefs are weird" talks with her. I really appreciated that mom.

So what's your CoC-kid square-dancing story?