Dirty Dancing

The 14th marked one year since Patrick Swayze's death, and Sharon and I both having the same ideas decided to watch good old Dirty Dancing again - although not together as we are on separate continents. So I snuggled up in bed on my own and was drawn into a world where appearances still meant so much, where men were still gentleman and believed in opening car doors for women, and people took pleasure in something other than TV.

It's a story that has been repeated hundreds of times in different ways - people from different sides of the tracks fall in love and overcome the obstacles that confront them in a society where that still mattered, but this movie somehow managed to become popular with all ages and throughout the years. It definitely made Patrick Swayze's career, but unfortunately didn't have the same effect for Jennifer Grey.

For me, my first memory of watching Dirty Dancing was as a child in my Aunty 'Nita's house in Durban - her beautiful sprawling house where she lived with her family and my grandparents. It must have been when it was first released as I was very very young, and my Father was still scandalized that I had been allowed to watch it at such a young age as he felt it was hardly appropriate for a child to be watching - he was probably right.

The memories of that house awed me as a child - I saw that side of my family as worldly and glamorous; through a child's eyes they sparkled. My grandparents loved their dancing, and even though it is probably not true, I saw them as coming from that same age and time, my grandmother sparkling in her beautiful gowns and high-heeled shoes that she had in her cupboard and occasionally allowed me to play with and try on. To this day I still remember hobbling around in a pair of high-heeled gold shoes that the sight of Penny's in Dirty Dancing always reminds me of. 

I wonder if in 60 years time, people will look back on the "noughties" and think that they were as glamorous and sparkling as the golden years of the 50's and 60's, and I somehow doubt it.