I had a horrible flashback a few minutes ago. Just looking at a video on Facebook made my heart hammer and my breathing quicken - and not in a good way. Nope.
My friend posted video of her son's class folk dancing.
Two words I despise. Two words that bring back a flood of horrible memories.
FOLK DANCING
Sixth grade. Everyone in the sixth grade at Cedar Bluff Middle School went to Tremont. What is it? It was called [then] an Environmental Education Camp.
It was 1974. Learning about the environment had evolved from the realm of hippie child stuff to regular middle class suburban kid stuff.
Here's what I remember. The first day, we got off the bus, got something to eat, and went on a hike. Then we went back to the camp, ate a horrible dinner, and then went outside to folk dance in the parking lot.
We couldn't watch TV. There were no TVs there. ACK!
There were many things wrong with Tremont, to me. I didn't learn anything about the Environment. For me, a chubby unpopular kid, it was a NIGHTMARE.
I didn't belong to any cliques of popular girls. I didn't even figure in the orbit of the popular girls. The boys? Well, they either ignored me or barked at me.
I was So Not Cool.
First of all, I didn't have the right shampoo. Every girl who was cool used Clairol Herbal Essence or LemonUp, which had a plastic lemon for a cap. I think I had Prell.
Secondly, the forced marching hikes. In the mountains. Which were always covered in fog. [Hey, they aren't called the Smoky mountains for nothing.]
I didn't like to hike. In the rain and mud. Blindly following the child in front of me, who had better hiking boots and chewed the right bubble gum and had the right shampoo.
My "hiking boots" came from K-Mart. My dad was not going to spend big bucks on boots I would wear... once? Ever? Mine were beige plastic and looked like they were designed for a large doll. My feet hurt all.the.time.
I digressed. Even now, my feet hurt from the horrible memories..
I remember the folk dancing in the parking lot most of all, though, because it involved [HORROR OF HORRORS] boys touching me.
We had been practicing folk dancing in gym just so we could folk dance in the mountains. Just like our ancestors. Except I bet the ancestors didn't hate it.
To a bunch of 12-13 year olds, folk dancing is nightmarish. For me, it was nightmarish times infinity.
Boys didn't want to touch me. I was taller than most of them. I had boobs [scary!] and I was chubby dork. I wore dorky glasses.
My teachers that went with us, Ms. Carey and Mr. Gayle, were extremely ODD. That's putting it nicely. Ms. Carey had no lips, and had Very Bad Hair. Every day. She hated me. She liked to scream at any group of kids that included me. She looked like she had menstrual cramps, 365 days a year.
She screamed at me one day so much my dad had to go to the school the next morning and get ugly, but then, she left me alone. I think she didn't want Mr. Perry to get his ass kicked because I think that's what my dad had to threaten to do.
Mr. Gayle was.... well, a bit effeminate. He taught Social Studies. He liked to pull out his ukelele and sing songs. Right after lunch he liked to sing "I was eating white worms!/ Down by the riverside / Down by the riverside." Folk music with words rewritten by the Addams Family. He had a bad comb-over and he liked certain boys to sit up front, near him.
I actually never had any problems with Mr. Gayle. He made some of the boys uncomfortable though.
Anyway, I digressed...
back to Tremont and Folk Dancing.
I am going to have Flashback Nightmares tonight, I know it. Somewhere, in a box in the garage, I still have the journal I wrote while at Tremont.
It details the list of horrors: the hiking. the food. the FOLK DANCING.
I sincerely hope that other children are not tortured that way any more. I hope in 39 years [OMG it's been nearly FORTY YEARS!! ACK!] some progress has been made.
Now, I love nature. I think kids should be outside, in nature, all the time.Lord knows it's better for their brains than just looking at videogames and phones all the time.
I like to look at nature while sitting in a rocking chair on a screened-in porch, with a glass of sweet tea beside me. That's as close as I want to get.
To be fair, the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont is a vastly different place than it was in 1974. Looks like it's actually a fun place, now. Of course, the fact that I am not an oversized, dorky, socially-awkward 12 year old makes a huge difference. I should have gone as a third grader, or a tenth grader. Adolescence is bad enough without the torture of Folk Dancing thrown it.
If you want to see a very cool video about Tremont check this out:
