Do-lang, Do-lang, Do-lang

May 10, 2017 at 4:12 pm · Filed under fun stuff, Mostly true, Stories, Uncategorized ·Tagged Buckeye AZ, Charles L. Mashburn, do-lang do-lang do-lang, eighth grade dances, girls mature faster than boys, good old days, humor, oh the humanity, scared to death, story, the Chiffons, writer

The eighth grade dance! It was without a doubt an event every young boy awaited with a gut-twisting eager dread.

I grew up in the little town of Buckeye, Arizona, and by the time my pals and I reached the eighth grade we knew we liked girls, but weren’t sure why, or what we should do about it.

They say girls mature faster than boys, and I’m thinking those Buckeye girls probably took advantage of that fact. While we were playing marbles, and twirling yo-yo’s, they were no doubt plotting our eventual demise, and those doggone dances had to have been part of their scheme.

The dances were held in the school cafeteria, and I still wonder who the genius was that decided the boys should stand on one side of the room and the girls on the other.

The girls would huddle in groups, giggling, and pointing at us, while we stumbled into one another, mumbling the name of the girl we “liked”, and asking the other guys if they thought she “liked” us. Then, after nine or ten songs had played, one of us would get our nerve up enough to walk across and ask our true love to dance. True loves, by the way, lasted about two to ten days when we were grade school.

But! Once the first couple hit the dance floor, it was on! Shined-up loafers clattered across the floor, the whispering and giggling stopped, and those girls got all wide-eyed, while the Chiffons belted out, “Do-lang, do-lang, do-lang…”.

Yep, those dances were some of the best worst nights of my life. I’m telling you, I never felt so good and so bad at the same time. Know what I mean?

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