Corners, Dirty Dancing and Life

Nobody puts Baby in a corner. – Johnny Castle

I can’t even begin to count how many times in my life I’ve heard that line. Starting first with elementary school sleepovers and proceeding through university and times I should have been studying… I must have watched Dirty Dancing a hundred times if I’ve watched it once. But until a few years ago I don’t even think I stopped to think about what that line means. Most of the time I thought that Johnny was just sticking it to Dr. Houseman. But it really did mean something. Or at least it came to mean something to me.

A few years ago I started noticing that anytime I did anything “different” or when I didn’t do what “everyone” was doing certain friends would express their shock/disgust/exasperation. It could be something as simple as eating or going to a movie alone (Gasp! You didn’t!) or refusing to join in on a fashion trend. One day it clicked. They had me in a corner. I didn’t think it was the same as Baby’s corner. I thought of it a little differently. I have this theory that the “friend” component in a person’s mind is like a big room with multiple corners and crooks and crannies. There are wedges, and closets, and alcoves. I think some of them might even have a breakfast nook. The person is in the middle of the room and the floor is wet with paint. And in each corner, crook and cranny there’s a friend. Some friends might get a window seat allowing them not one, but two corner. They are multi-functional friends. Some friends get a bigger dry area than others so they are allowed to wander a bit. But some of us get delegated to dusty corners with signs over our heads that say “Lunch Only Friend” and “Chick-Flick Only Friend” and we can’t move out of our corners without leaving tracks because of the stupid wet paint.

This is just my analogy. I know some people prefer hats. I can see why. Hats are fun. I’ve worn a lot of hats in my life, some great, some not so great and that should be burned and never worn again. I think I’d rather be friends with a hat person than a corner person. Hat people let you change your hat when seasons and fashions change. Corner people leave you in the corner until they feel they need you and then they take you out and dust you off.

I get tired of being in a corner. So I bust out which inevitably leaves the friend pissed off that I’ve left footprints on their shiny floor. As far as I’m concerned they have two options: they can let me leave footprints on their lives and invite their other friends to do the same yielding in a wonderfully funky floor or they can paint over my damn footsteps and pretend I was never there. The good friends like a funky floor. But it seems that most people choose the second option and that’s fine. That just means I was right to bust out.

And I’ll continue to bust out of corners. I can’t stay in that corner just to make you happy because my happiness and my journey through life – that’s first and foremost. I can’t be a good friend to you if I’m not myself. And you can’t be a good friend to me if you won’t let me be me and all that I can be. And take it from me, every time you bust out of a corner you learn even more about yourself. You learn what you are as much as you learn what you’re not.

Nobody puts Baby in a corner. And nobody puts me in one either.

Karen Ballum wears many hats including tech writer, blogger, and contributing editor for books at Blogher.org. Visit her at BlogHer www.blogher.org and her personal blog Sassymonkey http://sassymonkey.wordpress.com.

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