Thursday, September 9, 2010

"Nobody Puts Baby In A Corner"


Who can forget that line?

I was 13 years old when this movie came out, struggling with prepubescent awkwardness and unfamiliar feelings coming from uncharted places.  Dirty Dancing came along at an ideal time in my life, to answer all my questions....and then some.

It was one of the first movies I went to see alone with a friend, detached from the the parental units.  I'm sure we told our folks we'd be seeing the positively benign flick "Ernest Goes To Camp" or something along those lines.  If I were foolish enough to even utter the words DIRTY DANCING, I would have been locked in my bedroom for a month, TV set ripped out of the wall, all my Teen Beat magazines confiscated, eating meals that were shoved through a teeny slot in the door.

It started out innocently enough; wholesome, little rich girl embarks on a summer vacation with mom, pop and big sister to a family resort in the mountains.  Girl partakes in shuffleboard, canasta and ballroom dancing lessons by day and fine dining in the resort restaurant by night.  Then it's off to bed in the quaint little family cabin. 



Only, the girl, aka Baby, could not sleep one night and she decided to go exploring.  While her family slept peacefully dreaming of golf and and the perfect breakfast danish that was awaiting them the following day, Baby discovered an area of the resort that was not advertised in the brochure.  

The moment Baby carried her watermelon into that dark, sweaty, smoke-filled room packed with the glistening, scantily-clad bodies of the resort's "dancers," I nearly choked on my over-salted movie theater popcorn.  My heart rate quickened and pounded in my ears.



I was captivated by the display of raw sexuality; bodies pressing up against each other, rubbing and thrashing in a primal mating dance.  The look on Baby's face says it all.

 
When I walked out of the theater that night, I was already playing back every scene of the movie in my mind.  It was all I could think about for weeks!

It is still one of my favorite movies to this day and yes, I can recite it word for word while I watch it.



Thank you, Dirty Dancing, for introducing me to my adolescence and for the unforgettable good-girl, bad-boy love story!

                            ---------------------------------------

This post was inspired by Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop in response to Prompt #3:
What was it about that movie? Describe A movie you once had memorized.


Mama's Losin'It

3 comments:

  1. I love seeing that Dirty Dancing made such an impact on so many!! I almost wrote about this myself!!

    How I wanted to be Baby!!! I could watch this movie everyday, and never get tired of it.

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  2. BEST MOVIE EVER! I honestly still watch it at least once a year...although now that Mama Mia was remade- it's also on the list of faves! I am your first follower!!

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  3. I absolutely love this movie. And when PS died I cried like he was family IRL. I can't wait for my daughter to get older so I can watch it with her!

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