I was brought up in a fundamentalist family where dancing was a sin - it's viewed (by the Brethren church at least) as a sort of foreplay, so dancing should only be done by married couples and in private.

In my overweight and antisocial youth, this wasn't that much of a conflict, because going to a high school dance was the last thing I would ever have wanted to do.

It created a few funny situations, though. In elementary school the dances were during the school day and were mandatory unless you had a parent's note that you couldn't go - so they would put the fundamentalist kids together in a classroom and show us a movie. During one Halloween dance, they showed us a scary vampire movie! I wonder how many fundamentalist parents found out - ours didn't. Movies were also frowned upon in my family unless they starred Julie Andrews or Billy Graham.

I've been doing some catching up in both the dancing and movie-watching departments since growing up...

Marion