Hip Hop Dance

In Diana’s never-ending quest to find something, anything, to keep the boys occupied after school, she signed them up for a Hip Hop Dance class.

At first, I was a little uncomfortable with dance lessons. We Hamanns are a testosterone challenged group to begin with, I was worried about the potential fun making and bullying from the dullards.

But then I heard how the moms breathlessly described Marcus, the Hip Hop instructor. Let’s just say they would like to engage in some serious Lambada with him. In his pants. I figured being able to dance is a nice backup to hitting balls real far when it comes to getting girls.

Diana did me the favor of taping a recent class. Elijah dances as if no one is watching. Arms and legs and hair flailing with reckless abandon. Luca approaches it with the steely determination and stiff arms of a Judo expert. And Marcus made me feel funny.

This newfound boogie education coincided with the purchase a new Xbox dance game. It was another of Diana’s vain attempt to get the boys to play something that doesn’t involve shooting someone in the face. The game features colorful silhouettes of Marcuses and female Marcuses dancing to the latest tunes by people 30 years my junior. A camera picks up your movements and sends them to the National Security Agency (NSA), and also gives you points on how closely you match the digital dancers.

The boys have been playing it pretty non-stop, so we get to congratulate ourselves on fighting the obesity epidemic, one darkened basement at a time.

The other night, I announced very loudly that I was going to show Luca how it is done. Because his old man was known to cut quite a rug in the early 2000s. We loaded up the game and I demanded we dance to The Village People’s “YMCA.” Because I was pretty sure I knew what to do during the chorus.

After raking my knuckles across the ceiling enough times to draw blood, I started to get the hang of it. I even got a few encouraging blips and boops from the xbox. By the end I was really having fun and even adding my own little flair to the moves.

After the round, the xbox replayed our dancing back to us. I stood there, stunned, as a paunchy, grey-haired goblin lurched and sweated his way across the screen.

I quickly suggested we switch to Star Wars Battlefront so we could shoot some people in the face.