I know why Americans can’t tell their left from their right. We don’t learn to folk dance! Tonight I was the demonstration partner for the dancing. The instructor was this short no-nonsense Scottish woman. She had a thick accent, throw that in with some very loud accordion music, and what you get is- I really don’t know what I am doing.
Three steps to the right, two steps to the left, two steps forward, and two steps back. Face your partner and waltz. And I have no idea how to waltz so all of a sudden the woman started moving around in circles at break-neck speed and I was left utterly speechless as this grey-haired sixty-something woman moved me around the dance floor like a rag doll. At one point I tried to go to the next dance step because I thought I knew what it would be. Boy, was that a mistake. She looked at me with those piercing blue eyes and said to me in her thick Scottish brogue, “Noh, Wait till you’re told.” So from then on I followed the leader. I did all right, although when nobody tells you which foot to start with, I admit that I sometimes became confused.
So my demonstration days over, I joined a group for a group dance, called “strip the whittle.” (I am really going to have to double check on that because now that I write it, it just doesn’t seem that that could truly possibly be the name.) Name aside this one started off easily enough. First walk two steps forward, clap two times, then back two steps and clap and stomp. Then swing in the middle with your partner first with left arms hooked at the elbow, and then with the right arms hooked, and for the third time spin with crossed hands. The next move is borrowed straight from square dancing it seems (or maybe the other way around?) and you dosey-doe (cross your partner on the right, front and back with your arms crossed over your chest.) So far so good, but then the first couple spins down the middle for sixteen counts and then something about grabbing left arms then right arms and then follow the leader, but I never made it that far, somehow I always ended up royally confused laughing my head off by the end of the song. So I still have no idea how one actually does strip the whittle, but I do know that I had a tremendous amount of fun in the mean time.
So the stern grey-haired lady is yelling, “Left not right” to all the people in the room and ferociously tearing them apart, pulling them round the other side until they have met her specifications. Remember that the Scottish “polka” music is still issuing from the accordion at every quickening tempos.
Well, the Scots all learn it in grade school and get to practice it at every formal function and that is the key to their success with left and right- practice. That must also be how they are able to drive on the left.
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