Saturday, April 23, 2011

Trying Hard12: He's trying too hard to be unreasonable

Let me elaborate on this Trying Hard12 fella.

I came across a discussion on PlentyOfFish about some singles dance. One guy complained that people were venturing onto the dance floor with damp shoes, stating that this was making the floor sticky. I don't doubt it. This was apparently referring to some dance in February, so I'm guessing that the shoes were probably salty as well, thanks to the wintery weather. That would definitely make the floor kinda sticky.

Now that's bad news. Even before I took any dance lessons, I already knew that one shouldn't track mud or water onto a dance floor. I didn't know any real moves, but I could have already told you that that would be a bad idea. Heck, even if it didn't make the floor sticky, it would still be less than considerate.

Apparently, this Trying Hard12 guy didn't understand that. Now, if he disagreed with that need, he could have simply made a case for why wearing dry shoes wasn't necessary. Instead, he threw out snotty remarks like "You're a real complainer, aren't you?" Not exactly a sign of maturity on his part.

He wasn't the only one. There were some cool and rational heads, but a few other people were also childish. I could tell that trying to jump in would have been futile, since it's very difficult to intervene when people are acting like children.

Sadly, it seems like common sense and common courtesy aren't all that common anymore.

Some people didn't think the floor was sticky at all, or they didn't think that a dance floor needs to be clean. One person even said, "If the dance floor was bad, I would have noticed!" I'd like to make a couple of educated guesses.

My first guess is that the dance floor was probably stickier in some spots than in others. That's what you'd expect when people are tracking water and salt onto the floor. Second, I'd guess that the scoffers were probably dancing the way a lot of people do -- mostly moving their upper bodies, without a lot of confident foot movement. It's the kind of dancing that you typically see at a bar or club, the kind that lends itself to the unfortunate "white guy dancing" stereotype. There's nothing wrong with dancing that way, but when you do, you probably won't realize how important it is to keep the floor from getting tacky.