But I went to a dance on Saturday night. Ali and I took her 7 year old nephew Brett. It was a dance for the clients of Blanchard Valley Center. Most of the people who were there have a variety of mental retardation or developmental disability issues.
The evening was a blast.
Since Ali is a Service and Support Administrator for the Center I had heard about some of her clients. It was my first time to meet them. They were all dressed to the nines in their best Valentine outfits. For a $6 ticket we were treated to a meal of salad, spaghetti with meat sauce, garlic bread and cupcakes. The dance was DJ’d by Charlie Brown.
Charlie Brown is an incredible DJ. He not only spun music; he taught dances, he mixed and mingled; he cleared tables after dinner and made everyone feel comfortable and at home. I heard stories of other DJ’s who had worked other BVC dances who were fussy, demanding and arrogant. Not Charlie.
It would be an understatement to say that this population of folks LOVES to dance! Charlie led everyone in the Electric Slide, the Cha-Cha, the Macarena, YMCA, the Chicken Dance, and the Hokey Pokey – all in the first half an hour after dinner!
The most amazing thing about this population of people is the complete lack of inhibition on their part. If dancing looks like fun then JUST DO IT! If it’s fun, keep doing it! If not, that’s OK too. If the music tells you that it would be a good idea to get down on all fours and twist, then do it! It’s all good!
People with mental retardation also spend almost no time judging each other. No one ridiculed or laughed at by anyone else for a particular form of self-expression. There was lots of laughter – but none of it was directed AT another person. It was all WITH others.
Brett was a little shy at first, but soon he was out there Hokey-Pokey’ing with the best of them.
It was a fun night all around. We stayed about an hour before heading out. It was 8:00 p.m. when we left. There were busses still arriving, dropping off those in wheelchairs and in need of even more assistance.
It’s my guess that the house rocked until at least 11:00.
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