Social Convention

My sister, my friend, and I were in New York City, a few blocks away from Rockefeller Center, dancing around the stone edge of a fountain, when a grumpy old man from the office beside the fountain came out and told us to stop. So we got off and danced around the fountain on the ground, because no burned-out, over-cautious adult who has obviously never seen a musical was going to keep us from celebrating life.

We knew that, being in our teens, we were expected to act like civilized people. We knew how to act like civilized people, and could (and can) be perfectly polite and calm when necessary. It’s admirable to be mature, to be able to think clearly, to be able to get out of the “high school drama” mentality. Interestingly enough, however, those people I know who would be most willing to dance on the edge of a fountain exude significantly less drama than most of their peers.

Busy with daily concerns, caught up in their awe of propriety and social convention, most people seem to be actually afraid of harmless girls who want to spontaneously dance, and they won’t allow themselves to have a bit of crazy fun, or slow down and open up enough to enjoy life’s mundane surprises: my sister’s a capella group sang in the subway and no one clapped; Joshua Bell, world famous violinist, played anonymously played in Washington DC’s train station and was barely looked at; we danced on a fountain and were told to stop.

Of course, there is a difference between Woodstock type craziness, which I don’t advocate; and an innocent, honest let’s-just-let-our-inner-child-out fun, which I do.

My sister fears that once she turns twenty-one, she can’t eat honeysuckle and go on swings with the excuse that she was still sort-of a child.

And the fear isn’t lessened by grumpy men in proper business suits who can’t understand that while it’s all very well to be a model of diligence and propriety, sometimes you need to let your hair down and have fun and dance on a crowded street, or skip down the road making zebra noises. It’s an amazing stress reliever, ignoring social conventions after acting polite and reserved all the time, disregarding the bewildered looks as you walk through the neighborhood in a white satin angel-sleeved gown. I would know—I do it regularly.