Sheepish confession: I used to call square dances.
I know, I know.
Fits right in with my redneck Alabama stereotype.
My mom is to blame.
My single mom.
She started going to square dances at the YWCA.
Then she took me as her 'partner'.
Well, I liked it.
As geeky as it sounds now, I liked it.
Then the 'Y' started having square dances for tweens and teens.
They were wildly popular.
Go figure.
It was the 50s.
The Cleaver family generation.
After I'd been there a few times, the guy who called the dances asked "OK, who'd like to come up here and take a shot at calling?"
And I raised my hand.
I wasn't exactly an extrovert.
I was actually a bit shy.
Maybe I was a closet exhibitionist.
I cannot tell you why I raised my hand.
But I did.
I got up to the mic and just rolled out what I'd heard so many times before.
"Partners, form your squares! Gentlemen, bow to the lady on your left. Ladies, courtesy to the gentleman on your right."
And then the music started.
"Swing 'em high and whirl 'em low an keep on swingin' your calico, now Allemand left with the ol' left hand, back to your partner with a right-and-left grand.
Promenade!"
I could go on and on.
(I was, in fact, wildly popular. Like never in my life before or since.)
It was a different time and a different life.
Maybe this should go in the moribund 'Seniors' Forum.
= new reply since forum marked as read
confession: I loved it! 
plus at that age most of the girls were bigger than the boys so we would swing those poor guys off their feet 
Not the dogs, just their owners. 
I bet you know him and/or he knows you.
Its funny, I was in a truck stop in MN driving a horse from Chicago to St Paul. I pulled out my credit card and the woman says to me "XXXXXX? are you related to Sid XXXXXXX?" When I said yes, she just about fell over! She just about worshiped him. I hear it all the time.
It really is a lovely world. So charming and gentle.
gym class was co-ed and involved things like dancing. We spent a couple of months doing square dancing to records. We did the normal Western dances with things like the “Allemand left” etc. As an 11 year old who listened to jazz in the early 1960s, at first I really thought the dancing WAS “square”. But then we did other western dances like this one (not sure this one below qualifies as a true square dance) where the boys had to choose a permanent female partner and we later had to dance this for parents’ night. After getting to know the 11 year old girl I picked named Georgia, inviting her for a soda after school, and becoming better acquainted with her later that summer, I finally resolved that square dancing wasn’t bad at all.
("Put Your Little Foot, Put Your Little Foot, Put Your Little Foot Right Down"
...no guarantees, mind you.............
had to do that sh** in 6th or 7th grade--GAWD, I hated it!! Still can't dance. Still loathe square-dancing and country music. Whatever you do, don't try to inflict the stuff on me, I may...well.......
