Men don’t dance any more. Not unless they are drunk. Back when we were teenagers, we went to discos, and line dancing gave us permission to dance without being embarrassed. Twenty-first-century teenagers don’t have that excuse to get started.

I was at school in the early 80s, and we (boys and girls) used to dance together at the discos we went to every week. I was a bit shy as a teenager, and it was hard to get me dancing. The thing that pulled me in was a group dance, or a line dance, where everyone was dancing together with the same moves (”Come on and jump to the beat! Jump!”). I think the big difference was that no one was watching because they were all concentrating on their own “Jump!”. There might have been some boring twats criticising from the sidelines, but no one cared what they thought, because they were boring twats.

Once I’d got the confidence to line dance, it was a small step to disco dancing or doing the special moves that Ska required, and by then, I could dance anywhere with anyone — but it was the group dance/line dance that broke down those barriers.

I fell in love with a girl in my class when I was 12, but I was too shy to tell her. I held her hand when we all went ice skating together, and that was allowed because everyone was holding hands. We even jumped to the beat (”Jump!”) at the disco together, but I couldn’t tell her I loved her. Too shy.

I joined the Navy when I was 16, while everyone else was still at school. The first Christmas that I came home, there was a party at the school. We had all had a little to drink, and when Come on Eileen came on, we all danced together, holding hands in a big circle. I HELD HANDS WITH HER! The beer and the dancing made it easy for me to ask her out, and we were together for the next three years. When we compared notes later, it turned out that we had both fancied each other since we were twelve, but we were both too shy to do anything about it.

Fast forward to now, and my kids never had that line dancing opportunity to hold hands, so it’s nearly impossible to make that next big step to kissing and falling in love. They play video games across the interwebs together, but that step to holding hands and kissing is a step too far.

I had lunch with my girlfriend a couple of years ago, and our strongest memory from our teenage years was holding hands and dancing to Come on Eileen. We both remembered “Come on and jump to the beat! Jump!”, and wished we’d done something about it from the start.

Twenty-first-century kids don’t expect dads to dance.

When I was about 19, I was at Jacko’s birthday party where we played The B52’s Rock Lobster, and everyone did this weird, knees-twisting, arms-flapping dance that became the standard Man’s Dance for the next couple of years. I didn’t really get another opportunity to dance after that until I got married, but my wife made fun of my dancing, and I never danced again.

Fast-forward to now and my kids are all grown up and I don’t care what they think when I do my weird, knees-twisting, arms-flapping dance. I am supposed to be a middle-aged Dad who would NEVER dance because that’s not what dad’s do.

But I dance.