Thursday’s column: High schools crack down on students ‘grinding’
Jason Rollison | Wikimedia Commons
Allow me to draw you a picture of a scene that’s happening more frequently of late.
The setting is a high school gymnasium. It’s crowded with hormone-hopped teens eager for the annual homecoming dance, the first one of each school year.
Also in attendance are wary adults. They are the chaperones. As the lights dim and the deejay starts playing tunes, the chaperones’ eyes begin moving, and their focus sharpens. They’re on the lookout for a style of dance known as “grinding.”
The best way and most tasteful way to describe it is this: vertical spooning — with the girl facing away from the gy — and lots of below-the-belt gyrations and mandatory touching.
“It’s pretty graphic,” said Salem High School Principal John Hall. “It’s almost a simulation of sex.”
The grinding went over like a lead balloon at the North Cross School homecoming dance Saturday.
A warning from the deejay prompted a minor exodus of students, perhaps as many as one-third of the 120 or so people there. One of them was headmaster Chris Proctor’s 17-year-old son, who sent his dad an unhappy text.
READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.
October 4, 2012 - 6:00 AM
But the Ten Commandments in school might offend someone.
So the column is on High School Students and the picture is of a couple in a bar and he has a cigarette in his mouth. Way to paint the image for parents to show something worse.
This doesn’t bother me. The school can’t control what goes on in the backseat after the dance, but I don’t see why chaperones should have to stand around like potted plants while the kids get their doggie-style on on the dance floor. And I’ve seen it, and that’s what it looks like.
Not making this up: As I was reading this column the song “Footloose” came on the radio.
My wife thinks I should chaperone one of my son’s dances. I can’t wait to walk up to a couple of kids grinding on each other and say “hey, leave a little room for the Holy Spirit in there.”
Jack…ha! Then your son can send you irritated text messages like Proctor’s.
Jack, a point the Salem principal made was that parents whose kids are at the dance should not be chaperones, because if they stop hanky panky or ask dancers to leave, it could come back on their kid in school.
Imagine your next wedding reception…
Grandma says, “C’mon, dance with me…”
One more reason I’m glad I teach online high school: I don’t have to see my kids do stuff like this. A long time Roanoke educator recently told me that when her kids ask if she’ll be at their prom, she declines and asks them to just show her pictures of them in their finery because last time she actually went to a dance she couldn’t help but be upset to see her charges behaving the way they did.
I find this amusing more than anything…
Do I approve of it? Not necessarily.
HOWEVER, this is hardly new news.
Remember the Bump and Grind WAY back in the day?
In addition, this dance “style”, no matter what you call it, has been popular for quite some time. We heathens did this very thing back in the mid-80′s at the “club.” I’m not sure we called it “The Grind,” though.
The more things change…
Oh, one other thing… I also find it amusing that “only dancing ‘facing each other’ allowed.”
Aren’t the genitals closer to each other this way? Isn’t the preferred position of the non-liberated called “missionary?”
You may “grind” in more ways than one!
Just sayin’…
George Krutz,
I remember the bumb. You stood alongside your girl and you knocked hip bones with her.
The grind is more akin to doggy-style dry humping while standing.
I’ve had the misfortune of chaperoning a few high school proms in this area and around Baltimore over the past couple of years… and the photo above does the scene NO justice. It looks MUCH worse at the actual proms.
If the picture above was what is going on, it would be harmless. But that’s not what it looks like at these dances. At first, you don’t think much of it, but then you notice that these kids intensely dry hump for however many hours that the dance lasts… non stop. It does get disturbing pretty quickly.
By saying this, I realize I am officially old, but I really do not like the things I have seen girls wear to homecoming or prom. They are nothing but skin tight fabric that barely cover the tush and are paired with what we used to call F.M.P.’s. i.e. 4″ spike platform heels. I find myself wondering if the girls are going to a school dance or to walk the street. Twenty years ago when I was going to homecoming, we wore dresses that came just above the knee, and prom dresses were fancy and floor-length. I can only imagine what the look will be in 10 years when my son starts going to high school dances!
Lori, when I look at some girls’ fashion today, I remember my friends when our kids were all little who sort of pitied me having two boys because I “couldn’t buy all the cute clothes”. Ha! The Carter and Gymboree years go by fast…Forever 21 lasts a LOT longer.
The dances should be recorded in their entirety, and a copy available to any parent who wishes to see them, and a copy held for public internet posting after all students have become adults, with both kids and parents names listed. If you don’t want the whole world, forever, including every kind of creep and oh yeah-your child in the class of ’37, to see Mom grinding some idiot back in ’12, well, tough luck, grinders!!
I note that Sir Mix-A-lot’s “I Like Big Butts” is as familar to kids today, twenty years after it’s chart success, as “Great Green Gopher Guts” was to their grandparents. Like “Gopher Guts”, it is now a self-sustaining folk lyric. The entire culture has produced this, and the adults who were yesterday’s kids, and were thoroughly manipulated by amoral corporate schlock, and who continue to consume brainless poison, are responsible for that culture today. When kids see adults who don’t know the difference between fun and happiness, they can’t learn it either.
I’m also reminded of a comic (Seinfeld, perhaps?) who joked about rented tuxes that he sure didn’t want to wear something that was last worn by a 16 yr. old on the most exciting night of his life.
This is why you have to teach Christian morals in addition to English and math. It’s not about control; it’s about giving kids the foundation to make good moral decisions on their own. I would wager the majority of kids who go to church every Sunday wouldn’t feel comfortable “grinding” at a dance.
So no one’s going to weigh in on the side of rank oppression of our youth? We seem to be in agreement…scary.
#18 “I would wager the majority of kids who go to church every Sunday wouldn’t feel comfortable “grinding” at a dance.”
As usual, you show how little you know about teenagers. There’s a whole pile of them Catholic kids out there grindin’ away.
Catholic girls = expert grinders!
Dan, the link above sends you to the archives.
Art … fixed.
This is because 1) the bosses want me to link to the column on roanoke.com, rather than republish the whole thing on my blog; and 2) I prepare the “column” blog posts BEFORE they are posted to Roanoke.com.
If this is a “fresh” column, it’ll take you to the archive and the first-listed column in the archive is the whole thing.
It’s a pain in the you-know-what to remember to go back and change it.
Catholic
We’re not talking about fake Catholics, such as people who believe in abortion and don’t go to church. We’re talking about those who go to Mass every Sunday and believe in the tenets of the church. I doubt many of them would feel comfortable “grinding”
#21 Two of the most — ahem — “forward” girls I ever went out with were Catholic, Dan. Both of them went to church twice a week every week at that big place up on the hill near Hotel Roanoke.
gdad, indeed. Catholic girls and ministers’ daughters were the most interesting dates of all.
#21 Two of the most — ahem — “forward” girls I ever went out with were Catholic, Dan. Both of them went to church twice a week every week at that big place up on the hill near Hotel Roanoke.
Not sure which is more unbelievable: that devout Catholics would dance like this or that Gdad went out with girls.
#26 Funny you should mention that, Dan, the girl who taught me how to REALLY kiss was a minister’s daughter. And it happened at church camp.
#27 “or that Gdad went out with girls.”
suzie, take a break and work on new material. I started to predict you’d say this, but that might have discouraged you from being so predictable.
#24 As I said earlier, you really haven’t clue about kids. It shows every time you attempt to post about them. You should quit embarrassing yourself.
“Suzie says:
“….We’re talking about those who go to Mass every Sunday and believe in the tenets of the church. I doubt many of them would feel comfortable “grinding”
Posted on October 5th, 2012″
According to Screwzie’s definition of a real Catholic, how many would that be here in the Roanoke Valley? Two?
Screwzie’s church must be full of fake Catholics. Is there a saint for that?
“gdad, indeed. Catholic girls and ministers’ daughters were the most interesting dates of all.”
I’ll add a +1 to support this. I dated a girl a few years ago who was a catholic priest’s daughter. Certain things were never dull… that’s for sure!
@32… “a catholic priest’s daughter”… You’re either lying or mistaken, but either way, the Vatican only allows its priests to have sex with boys.
A catholic priest’s daughter? I’m sure that’s an interesting story itself.
Suzie:
18.”This is why you have to teach Christian morals in addition to English and math. It’s not about control; it’s about giving kids the foundation to make good moral decisions on their own.”
Suzie, you make these naive comments on purpose. I can tell you, positively, that “good little religious girls” can get nasty with the best of them!