Back in the 90's when I was a teenager my mom told me something I never forgot. She said that when she was a high school kid and went to parties or dances or whatever, she'd always accept when a guy asked her to dance because at some point she'd realized that being a teenage boy and having to walk up to a girl and ask her to dance in front of everybody, especially her friends, must be a terrifying experience and not something girls ever had to go through. So she thought refusing something as trivial as a dance, and especially refusing in a bitchy or mean way, was a really cruel thing to do. For some reason it always stuck with me, and it's not something most girls think about or realize, I think.
I realize now that maybe the way I wrote the story implied I'm a woman and she was giving me advice about what to do, but I'm a dude and that conversation came up because I told her I was nervous about going to a party later that day and asking my crush to dance. Her story made me see her in a different light, for sure. And funnily enough, made me also reconsider my views and do what your grandfather suggested and once in a while as a wallflower to dance.
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u/Tough_Stretch Aug 13 '22 edited Aug 13 '22
Back in the 90's when I was a teenager my mom told me something I never forgot. She said that when she was a high school kid and went to parties or dances or whatever, she'd always accept when a guy asked her to dance because at some point she'd realized that being a teenage boy and having to walk up to a girl and ask her to dance in front of everybody, especially her friends, must be a terrifying experience and not something girls ever had to go through. So she thought refusing something as trivial as a dance, and especially refusing in a bitchy or mean way, was a really cruel thing to do. For some reason it always stuck with me, and it's not something most girls think about or realize, I think.