Posts Tagged ‘High School’


Posted on May 24, 2011 - by

Can you make a leopard dance?

You’ve heard the expression, “you can’t change the spots on a leopard” but can you make a leopard dance?

I reunited with two high school friends, Dorean and Karen, a few weeks ago for a girls’ weekend at my house.  Forty years is a long time to be separated, but everything re-clicked immediately and we were ready for fun … just like in the sixties.  

After a little Googling, we learned a band called The Psychedelic 60’s

Leopards Dancing

was playing at The Griswold Inn in Essex, CT … Perfect! 

The music drifted out to the front entry and our excitement grew as we walked through the door. We reminisced and anticipated the good time that awaited our arrival. There was one slight problem. As we walked into the bar area the room was full but the dance floor was empty.  People lined up at the bar listened to the music and tapped their feet to the beat.  People at tables watched the band and moved their heads to the beat, but no one danced. My friends and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and headed to the dance floor. 

The song ended and we walked to our table. As the next song began, a gentleman asked me to dance.  I did.  Dorean asked his lady to dance. She did. Karen asked someone else to dance and they did.  Then I spotted tambourines and maracas on a nearby table.  I grabbed them and handed them to Dorean and Karen.  Within seconds, everyone was on their feet in a conga line around the room. What’s more, the dancing continued long into the night.

If one dance turned a roomful of wallflowers into a dance floor of Fred Astaire’s and Ginger Rogers’s in four minutes, imagine what effect your positive actions could have on others.  

 Go ahead … try it … I’ll bet you can make a leopard dance too!


Posted on September 6, 2009 - by

Stepping Stones

Stepping Stones As one of the shortest good-beach weather summers draws to a close, weekend warriors are savoring every bit of forecasted sunshine.  On my weekly trek from New Jersey to Connecticut, traffic on the Merritt Parkway grew heavier with each mile. I scanned the radio stations and listened for something to help pass the time.  Rod Stewart’s gravelly croon caught my attention. He was singing Forever Young, the song I dedicated to my daughter when she graduated high school and I let my mind drift back to 1996.

Emotions ran high that summer before she left for college. I needed her most and she wanted me least. I wanted to hold on and knew I had to let go.  She was ready to conquer the world – her world now, not mine – a world I could no longer control. I had prepared us both for this time over the prior 18 years, so with equal amounts of pride, confidence, and trepidation, I stepped aside and she took the helm and navigated through the years that followed to become the woman, wife and mother she is today.

Instinctively, we want to hold on to the child in our children forever and keep them safe. And whether we send them off to college or to their first apartment, the time comes when we can’t protect them any longer, when we stand in the background and parent from a distance knowing we laid a solid track for them to follow, and we give them wings.


Posted on April 26, 2009 - by

Reach Out and Touch Someone

16456232Did you have a pen pal when you were young? I remember mine well.  Her name was Ann Morgan and she was from England. It was exciting to have a “friend” who lived in a foreign country.  We wrote religiously every week and I raced to the mailbox every day in anticipation of her letters.  They arrived in white envelopes with red and blue striped borders and stamps of British royalty sat regally on the upper right corner. My name and address written in cursive with European flair sent a message to anyone who touched it that Ann Morgan and I were friends across the ocean.  We wrote through high school and even a little beyond.  We had hoped to meet one day, then somewhere between high school graduation, college, marriage and children we lost touch.

I met my then-future husband while he was on a 30-day leave from the Navy.  We spent every day of the remaining two weeks together and promised to write when he left.  Once again, I kept the mailbox vigil, for the white envelopes with red and blue stripes. We exchanged pictures and I often packed my letters into boxes filled with oatmeal cookies and other treats from home. We spent the next eleven months learning about each other through our letters and became engaged to marry on his next leave.  We planned our wedding through letters during his second tour of duty in Viet Nam, then somewhere between raising children and growing careers we lost touch.

Important people can slip from your grip before you realize they’re gone.  Aging parents, tenuous marriages, blossoming relationships, growing children, long distance relationships all need nurturing. In our new society of instant messaging and social media networking, it is easy to fall into a false sense of communication security.  Nothing takes the place of personal touch. That’s real contact – person to person skin to skin if possible.

A real pat on the back for a job well done
An affectionate hug to a friend in need
A spoken compliment to a child
A follow-up kiss to the “I-Heart-U” text.

I’m all for saving the environment, but nothing takes the place of a hand-written note of thanks, get well wish or expression of condolence.  When was the last time you really reached out and touched someone?