Does anyone else feel the need to watch Dirty Dancing tonight?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVNTPJKuVQg&hl=en&fs=1&]

 

How about now?

I LOVE that movie! I don’t know many people from my generation (who are females!) that don’t love the movie. It takes me back to my childhood – probably because it was one of the first ‘adult-like’ movies I was allowed to watch. Geez, now that I think about it, I was allowed to watch that movie when I was 6-7 years old? And I wasn’t allowed to watch The Simpsons when I was 12-13 years old? Hmmm..something seems wrong here.

It may have been because I was a dancer, and watching Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey move like they did was mesmerizing to me in my young age. This was waaaay before Dancing with the Stars, so it wasn’t often you would see dancing like that. I used to want to ‘practice the lift’ – you know, when Johnny and Baby are in the water practicing the lift? I would practice this with my mom in the living room. I would also practice this alone by throwing myself over the arms of the couch with my arms spread out attempting to balance on my stomach.

I also wanted to re-enact the scene where Johnny and Baby are crawling around on the dance floor singing to each other. Now that seems a bit odd.

I’m strange.

It was also probably the first time I had seen a love story. It was so exciting, watching them fall in love, then be torn apart, only to have them reunite in a dramatic ‘forbidden’ way, with Johnny literally sweeping her off her feet. Ahhhh…romance…I will forever be a sucker for it.

Dirty Dancing played over and over in my house when I was young – in fact, I don’t even think we had the VHS. We did have HBO, however, and it was played endlessly. Along with Dances With Wolves, which my two brothers and I had some strange fascination with. That lasted for a few years, until they graduated to The Last Of The Mohicans, which was too scary for me. And yes, I am older than them.

Dirty Dancing made me wish I had a ‘cool’ name like Baby, and in a few years when I wore a jean jacket and neon spandex and carried a watermelon to a dance club, I too, would find my Johnny.

Well, I did find my Johnny.

But my first true crush will always be on Patrick Swayze, crawling across that dance floor in the tight, tiny, black tank top.

You can find me in front of the TV tonight.