Ballroom Dancers

For the last month, my husband and I have been converting VHS to DVD for my mom, and also copying all our DVDs onto our electronic media server for easy use through apple TV. It's been fun, but also time consuming. VHS has to run all the way through the movie while we record; then we send it to the apple TV, then we send it to encode, then we make an image and burn onto a DVD. And we have about 60 VHS to convert.

Today, I'm recording one of my own... DVDs actually, but I have to record it like it's a VHS because it such an obscure format that the computer couldn't read it. It's a video of my high school's ballroom dance company crew preforming their end of year show.

I've wanted to learn to Ballroom dance since i was around 12 or 13, but my father refused to teach me... he seemed to think that if i knew how to dance, i'd get into trouble with boys at school. My mom always thought that was bogus, and i'd be more likely to do that if i didn't know how to dance properly... like i'd end up doing the stupid tight hug slow dance instead.

I finally took Ballroom beginners in my senior year... it was slightly awkward because i was the only senior, and everyone else were freshmen and sophomores, which also made me one of the tallest. The only seniors in the class besides me, were the 5 teacher aids. And they were all stuck up, show offs, and snobs.

It ended up being such a bad experience, in fact, that i haven't been able to shake my prejudice that all well accomplished dancers are "worldly, materialistic, snobbish, hate-mormon standards and everyone less accomplished in Dance than I" beliefs. Which is funny, since i took a latin class in college, that was actually a fairly good experience... except that i was still the tallest. Dave has also tried to get me to go to a college swing club group, which is there mainly to make beginners into professionals to join the college team and compete... and they're really nice, but i still can't shake that belief that all dance teachers look down on their students... (even though i was taller than those teachers too.)

As a young teenager, I thought I should marry a guy that can dance, because i thought i'd want to, but as it turned out, Dave ended up marrying a girl that refuses to dance more often than not. Kinda stinks, huh?

A similar thing happened to my brother... he had major natural talent for music and instruments, but swore it all off because of a rude, judgmental and condescending teacher in middle school.

It's amazing how a group or a single individual can make some devastating results simply by being unkind.