I just read the lyrics for the song, the Wobble, and I am blushing. It’s about sex. It’s a really fun dance, though, mostly for women, although Saturday, as I wobbled with forty other people on a postage stamp of a dance floor at a Vallejo winery, there were at least four guys. We each had about two square feet to move in, and as long as we all moved together, it worked.
Big girls like to back it up – that’s the cue for us to stick out our butts, twice. Then we punched the air to our left, then to our right. Then we did the little dance forward, back, step step, step, forward, back, step step, step, then eight rocking steps as we turn to our left and get ready to do it again.
It’s a line dance with attitude. The crowd was every shade of the rainbow, black, brown, yellow, pinkish white, and me being twice the age of some of the dancers.
No one cared. I had on my lavender hat, my skinny jeans, my red top that was only 50% cotton, so I was already a sweat ball. This was in the third hour of a four-hour set. When the music started, I recognized it from Milan’s Zumba class. She’d taught us old white and Asian ladies at the senior center how to wobble back in 2019, before the pandemic did away with in-person exercise classes. When classes came back, Milan didn’t.
As we stuck out butts to “big girls like to back it up”, then punched, left 4 times, right 4 times, then forward rock, step step step, the band was truly impressed. Papa Joe was leading the vocals as he sat on his stool. The three front female singers were providing back-up as we danced, turned, and sometimes bumped into each other. Not me, I stayed in my little two square feet as the women in front of me, to the sides of me, and behind me did the same.
If I were to count the bodies in synchronized motion, I’d say it was six rows of ten people, so maybe there were 60 of us. The crowd numbered 300 according to the winery owner, so we had a good-sized audience. Some were even recording it. That’s me in the lavender hat! Never mind my age. You’re as young as you feel, right?
I always feel younger when I’m dancing. Maybe that’s why I like doing it so much. The time flies by, I hear great music, and I’m exercising plus getting in some cardio. Never mind that I’m soaked down to my underwear. It turned out to be a warmer August day than I thought. Those dang skinny jeans are hot!
Many women in the crowd were in sun dresses, sandals, or shorts. After my melanoma scare in 2020, I stopped getting a tan. I did fake tans for a couple of years. This summer, I didn’t even get that done.
It’s okay. My whitey white skin was mostly covered up, except for my hands and face. The lavender hat helped hide my true identity, the old lady sticking her butt out, doing the Wobble.
Fun, fun, fun.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 