Dancing with Liquor

My mother recently gave me a jazz CD with music from the twenties and thirties on it. On the inside front cover is a quote from someone somewhere which reads:

Jazz dancing is degrading. It lowers the moral standards. Unlike liquor, a great deal of the harm is direct and immediate. But it also leads to undesirable things. The jazz is too often followed by the joy ride. The lower nature is stirred up as a prelude to unchaperoned adventure.


So I played it over and over and over with a glass of wine in my hand while dancing around by myself, to see which would lead me to have immoral thoughts first - the music or the liquor.

Sadly neither caused me to feel as though I was a brazen hussy searching for a quick and intimate interlude.

I think it's because I'm eternally old. Apparently, according to my teenage daughter, once you reach the age of 25 you should just give up doing anything that might be considered "cool" because you'll just look like a bumbling idiot trying to regain your youth.

She once came home and told me how her poor friend was embarrassed becaue her mother, who is OVER 35, has a myspace page. I asked her how she will feel when she is 35 and her daughter tells her she is embarrassed about the fact that she is not yet in an old people's home. She reckons there's no chance she's going to ever be 35 because that's like AGES away. I had to do give her the "I thought that once too" talk. I should have remembered that that giving that talk is like asking "have you done your homework". It falls on deaf ears. They can't hear anything that does not mention the words "would you like some money now".

I decided the only thing to do is play degrading, immoral jazz music really loud every night, especially when her friend are here.