Prince “Controversy”

Thank God I grew up in the pre-YouTube age.

Prince was on the Island last week, and so I was trying to think about some of my favorite Prince memories and I flashed back to a rainy day in 1985.

We had discovered Prince, through “Purple Rain” the year before, (like most white suburban kids) and my friends and I had started to work backward through his catalogue, picking up copies of “1999,” “Prince” and “Controversy.”

On any other Spring afternoon, the bunch of us might be playing basketball or tossing the nerf around, or (of course) trying to figure out how we could get our hands on some beer before the High School dance scheduled for that evening.

But on a rainy day like this one, there wasn’t much fun to be hand, other than to hang around the house where parents weren’t home, and blast some records.

I can’t imagine who among us had the idea to make up our own dance. Truthfully, there wasn’t one of us who was particularly groovy. But we did.

We lined up. We worked out synchronized moves. We each had what could loosely be described as a “solo.” And we practiced.

That night, at the high school dance, the DJ spun “Controversy” for us, and we performed.

The whole idea that I was part of a group of people who created a series of dance moves, is so foreign to me, doesn’t seem like this could possibly be my own memory.

The last time I was on a dance from was when I got married five years ago, and that was certainly only because it was mandatory.

I avoid the dance floor like the plague, because good God, I’m not very funky. Nor, if I recall, was anyone else in that group of dancers.

Oh, I’m sure in 1985, we thought we were pretty damn slick. But no doubt, we were horrible.

Thank God we grew up in the pre-YouTube age and there is no chance of anyone, ever, anywhere, at anytime, re-living those “moves.”