On Grinding:

I was greeted by my first class this morning with exasperating demands to know my thoughts on "The Dance Contract".  Being that I do not teach until the second hour of the school day, I had no idea what they were so upset about.  As I discovered, the students of my high school were given a a contract at the start of the day, agreeing to four policies, three of which seem to be completely overshadowed by the following: "Inappropriate and/or sexually explicit dancing is not permitted.  This includes, but is not limited to: back to front dancing, grinding, moshing, straddling each other's legs."  If a student chooses to attend any high school dances this year, that student (and a parent or guardian) must sign and return the contract, prior to the dance.  So the question I faced at the start of my day is, how do I feel about this rule?

In any situation that pits teenagers vs. staff, I reflect on my own teenage years and try not to establish the "When I was your age" point of view.  But when I was their age, I loved high school as much as I hated being a teenager:  I was an emotional wreck during most of my teenage years, but in school I could blend in, escape or at least receive some empathy from my classmates.  The pressure to be something other than myself, which I felt in most aspects of my life, I did not feel in school.  In school I was very often unsure of who I truly was, but I was absolutely confident that whoever I was, it was okay with my friends and (most of my) classmates.  I was happy to fly under the radar at school–I didn't necessarily feel the need to be "popular"–but of course I always wanted the right people to like me.  And when I say, "the right people," I mean girls.  I wanted girls to like me.

I still remember the first time I "slow danced" with a girl.  Her name was Nadia, and I was in 7th grade.  I also remember how I wasn't really interested in slow dancing with Nadia at all, but I felt like I had to, so the other girls knew that I was not a jerk.  I remember how I put my hands on her hips–arms almost completely extended–and sort of hung onto her sweater while we teetered back and forth in a circular motion.  In this era of adolescent dancing, I think nervous couples like us looked like a pair of Frankenstein's monsters.
I also remember when an 8th grader ran up to us with a running video camera and yelled, "I'm going to show your dad your first slow dance!"  (I still remember his name too).  My dad taught a video production class at school, and undoubtedly had little-to-no interest in an obnoxious kid trying to embarrass his son to him.  Still, I was mortified that my dad would see me dancing with this girl.

I was raised in a very conservative religion.  I remember at some point of my adolescence–I must have been about 13–a Wednesday night at church where the lesson was on sexual morality.  There were kids ranging from age 13 to 18, boys and girls.  It was rare that we even got to spend time with members of the opposite sex.  Like I said; conservative.  Our teacher drew a 12 foot line on the chalk board and wrote "holding hands" on the far-left end of the line and something like "fornication" (I don't think anyone in my church ever used the word "sex") on the far-right end of the line.  He then asked something like, "When you're on a date, where on this line do you feel like you should be."
I whispered to my friend, "somewhere near the middle," half-joking, but also being very honest.  I knew that I was much too terrified, unsure of myself and lacking enough confidence to even make it close to the middle of that spectrum, not to mention breach the middle of the line.  But the hormones raging through my 15-year-old body told me that I was absolutely ready to try.  The joke had another layer though:  my group of friends were the outcasts of our church.  None of us had ever had a serious girlfriend, much less any hope of any girl doing anything more than holding hands with us.
The correct answer was given by a young man my age.  "As far to the left as possible."  Dozens of my peers silently nodded while I shrunk in my chair and turned red.

I still remember the second girl I ever slow-danced with.  Her name was Anita, and it was at that same dance, in the 7th grade.  I remember how I was completely interested in slow dancing with her and I felt like I had to, so the other girls would notice that Anita wanted to dance with me.  I remember how I started to put my hands on her hips, arms almost completely extended, and began to hang on to her sweater, but Anita wrapped her arms around my waist and held onto me tightly while we teetered back and forth in a circular motion.  I was not prepared for this.
As I entered 8th grade, I was still not prepared for girls wanting to press their bodies next to mine; even while in the socially acceptable safety of the dark, far end of the school cafeteria, while Skid Row's "I Remember You" played at high volume.  I was wholly and completely unprepared for this, even when I was "going with" one of Anita's friends, who truly did like me.  And I truly did like her, but I just never could muster the courage to kiss her.  I was "going with" her for six months (including two separate weekend parties and a school ski trip), and our tongues never touched.  I suppose that stupid line on the chalk board worked.

In 9th grade I started to hear about kids having sex.  While my hormones insisted that I must try this "sex" thing, my moral background and the logic of my brain told me that not only was I forbidden to, but I had no chance of developing much more than a hand-holding relationship with any girl in school.  My brain was right about having no chance, but only because it knew my nerves were not established enough to even take a girl out on a date (something I never did successfully do in high school).

I wish things got better in 10th grade, but they didn't.  In fact, things were pretty much the same in 11th grade, 12th grade and much of my college career.  I liked girls, and I tried to get them to like me, but I had no idea how to make that happen.  If I tried being nice to a girl, she started going out with a jerk.  If I tried being a jerk to a girl, she hated me and went out with a nicer guy, or a different jerk.  If I acted indifferent to a girl who liked me, she thought I didn't like her and went after someone else.  On top of all that, I was much too picky; I kept trying to find the "perfect" girl for me.
In reality, I was so terrified by the fact that I was so inexperienced when it came to dating, and so worried that I would head too far right on that imaginary chalkboard line, that I was immobilized when it came to girls.

So I'm glad that when I did go to school dances, that I didn't see any grinding.  Because if I did, I would be much too nervous to participate:  I would be much too nervous to actually grind my mid-section against a girl's mid-section, I would be much too terrified to have any of my classmates from church tell my parents what I was doing, and I certainly wouldn't have enough confidence to even physically press my body against any girl's body; I would probably pass out if it was a girl I was actually attracted to.

I don't want to be misunderstood:  I'm sure there was "grinding" or "dirty dancing" going on somewhere, at some time, during my high school years.  I won't pretend that this is something that started in the 21st Century, or that bad things didn't happen in the 1990s.  Again, I'm not saying "When I was your age..." because it is irrelevant to the reason why our school district doesn't want teenagers to grind on each other.  It really isn't about what we did when we were kids, it has nothing to do with whether or not you can dance without looking promiscuous to a bunch of adults and it certainly isn't about how uncomfortable I was with myself when I was 15.  I am now a confident adult, who is now sometimes too comfortable expressing his feelings.  And I used to be a kid who would be mortified to be at a school dance where it seemed that everyone (except for me) was experiencing lustful experimentation of the opposite sex.

I think about all the kids in my school who might be like a lot like how I was at 15-years-old.  Then I think about all the kids at school who might be even more religious, or more timid, or more unsure, or more scared than I ever was.  I think about those kids when I hear their peers say things like "The kids who don't want to grind don't have to do it," or, "It's no big deal," or, "Nobody cares."
I'm sorry, but the kids who say those things are wrong.
The kids who don't want to grind do feel like they have to do it.  It is a big deal.  And I care.