I’ve always been a total grandma when it comes to dancing — I do not condone even the thought of such public self humiliation. So it is perfectly reasonable that I would hope to never attend a high school dance in my life.

But then I defied common sense yet again and went to Sadies to write this column. Without a date, of course.

Mentally scarred for life

Sadies made any conceptualization of a dance I’d had before look like a peewee league.

After receiving a patdown (Did they honestly think that I, of all people, would bring drugs in there? Whoever heard of grandmas doing drugs?) and wasting 10 dollars of my parents’ hard earned money, I decided to walk a lap around the gym lobby and gym. It was the first of about 30 that I made in that hour.

I’m freaking frustrated

Going on another of my rounds, I saw for the first time a couple freaking to the extreme. A girl wearing smaller than fun-sized shorts (Ew!) was sweeping the floor with her arms like a broom and a guy was… erm … Let’s just say he was very much into what he was doing. I guess if anything, I learned a three valuable lessons from the passionate duo:

(1) Freaking couples look freaking stupid.

(2) Freaking must hurt girls’ backs.

(3) The floor was slightly cleaner where the couple had been freaking.

I looked around, and I saw the whole gym moving in an eerie rhythm. Right, left, right, left. Forward, forward, forward. It was almost as if I was the only normal person keeping my body at a 180 degree angle.

I decided to save myself and get out of there before someone would ask me to freak. But before I could get to the door, another friend came up to me, fresh from a round of ìuprightî freaking, with a nose dotted with sweat.

“How do you like the dance?” she asked, her face beaming for some perverted reason.

“It’s horrible.” I grimaced. “Just horrible.”