The year innocence met adolescence

Last night I stumbled upon Dirty Dancing whilst zapping for a program to work as background noise was I was doing some mindless work on the laptop. Reinout wasn’t really eager to watch in his eyes “a has been, C-movie”, so he came with an ultimatum. “You either watch the film or work on your computer but not both.”. I slammed the laptop shut and 2 seconds later it was whisked away, not to be seen for the duration of the film.
Reinout’s comment of a “has been C-movie” could not be farther from the truth. This film is a classic, a legend. A movie I have some incredible memories attached to.

I was 12 when I finally got to see it, the summer of 1988. Me and my friend Maria were excited beyond belief as this was the first time we could go to the cinema to watch a film with an age limit of 12. We felt vastly grown up, being on our own, with our own money at our leisure to spend. We bought popcorn and soda and settled in two cushy seats. The film had already been playing for months, but due to the age limitation we had to wait until coming of age. Those were the days in conservative Sweden.

From the moment Patrick Swayze appeared we were hooked, mesmerised, if not in fact glued to the screen. The first dirty dancing scene, the one one when innocent Baby is helping out with carrying some ripe melons (coincident or symbol? probably the latter.) took our breath away. We were two girls, neither of us possessing the experience of a boyfriend,  a flirt, or even a first kiss. It was the time when life was still innocent. MTV had yet to appear on our television screens, with Madonna dancing before burning crucifixes. Little did we know that those scenes would soon alter our lives forever and our quest for love, boys and MTV would be a new found purpose in our teenage lives.

Johnny’s appearance became the first tremor, an initial warning sign to the adolescent earthquake that was awaiting us. He opened our eyes for something sensual and forbidden. Of beating hearts, butterflies and moist skin. Of love and lust that had still yet to be defined to a barely teenage girl that only knew the symptoms but not the cause.

Around this time I got my first LP player. One of the first albums I bought was True Blue by Madonna. I would dance to La Isla Bonita in front of my turned off TV, the screen acting as a mirror in front of which I would go down on my knees and perform all kinds of seductive poses. I would block my door with a chair in case my mum would catch me in an embarrassing moment.

I have beautiful memories of that year. The year when innocence met adolescence. Still a girl with the dreams and hopes of a young woman. I sometime wish I was back in those days. How amazing life was.