Nobody Puts Baby In the Corner

Yesterday was a really stressful and emotional day.  I ended up having to take my daughter to the Emergency Room and sitting there with her for a little over three hours.  In the end, she’s okay and the baby is okay.  She’s just under too much stress.  I think it has been building up over the past four months and the last week has been particularly bad.  I guess I’m glad she ended up in there because maybe now this will serve as the warning she needed to slow down, think about her options, herself and her baby.  Of course this is easier said than done and it is her life so I won’t add to her stress by trying to influence her.  I just have to be there to support her and stand by her.  If I had my choice, I’d rather go strangle a particular neck but that’s not going to happen.

When I finally got home about 9 in the evening, I read the news about Patrick Swayze’s death.  It came over a friend’s post on Face Book.  I knew it was coming.  I just didn’t know when or how it would hit me when it did.

Dirty Dancing is one of my all time favorite movies.  It is probably around number five on my list.  Why?  I think, for me, there were lots of reasons.  It was released in 1987.  I was 31 years old.  It was a time when I was a housewife with two kids under 5 and feeling neglected, ignored, unappreciated, well you get my drift.  Then there was the music.   Wow!  I still want to get up and dance every time I hear the soundtrack, especially I’ve Had the Time Of My Life.  The story was another attention grabber for me.  I was always Miss Goody Two Shoes.  Not doing anything wrong, wild, or fun!  I always wanted to just hit that dance floor and never sit down but that would bring attention to me and my parents raised me to not ever bring attention to myself, either positive or negative attention.  Then there was the story of the love story between Baby and Johnny.   The dancing.  I have always loved dancing.  In college, once I was away from my parents, I learned to dance to all sorts of music that never played on the stereo in my parents’ house.  I wanted to move.  My body wanted to follow the beat of the music.  My spirit craved to be allowed to show who I was inside.

There were lots of reasons.  I think that the movie  is somewhat symbolic to me.  I know it’s the film that makes me smile and sway and want to get up and dance.  It reminds me that just because someone acts in a way that is against the accepted norm it does not make them a bad person.  The accepted norm is not the only  right or good way.

Then there was Johnny Castle…Patrick Swayze.  No one can deny the man could move.  No one can deny that he could act (although many do, okay mostly guys).  He had solid good looks.  He had a wonderful singing voice.  He was, in my eyes, a nearly perfect package.

I think that every girl melted when Johnny Castle walked over to Baby’s parents’ table and said, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”  Who doesn’t want someone to stand up for them?!  There’s a lot more to this reason but I’ll save that for another post.  But when he delivers that line, we all melt (okay, except for the guys).  We all want someone to fight for us.  We all want someone to speak up and out for us.  At least I always did.  I’ve not had that.  I’ve not ever felt that someone was sticking up for me; that someone was willing to fight for me.  Not since my brother David beat up the kids that threw a baseball at my head when I was in first grade.

That’s what this movie did for me.  That’s why it’s more special than Ghost or The Outsiders or anything else he did.

Tonight, when ABC airs Barbara Walters’ repeat of the interview with Patrick Swayze, I’ll be turning ABC off and putting in my Dirty Dancing DVD.

And it reminds me that the next time a certain person messes with my daughter, I will fight for her and I will stick up for her and if necessary, this fat little old lady will knock his lights out.  Nobody messes with my baby!

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