Jitterbug

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Father - Daughter dance at my Wedding!
March 4th is my Dad's birthday and I am so thankful for the memories I have with him over the 52 years I've known him.  In the mid 70s, I was a tween and my dad taught me how to jitterbug.  He taught both me and Christy.  He and mom used to jitterbug all the time early on in their relationship.  Dad LOVED to dance.  It was in his blood.  And I LOVED to dance with him.  He could just feel the beat of the music and it made him want to get up and dance.  Dancing the jitterbug with Dad is one of the happiest memories I have of my father.  I swear if he could walk today he would be up dancing with me.  Learning the jitterbug was the first time in my life my dad had taught me something that I would end up enjoying the rest of my life.  I loved it!  It really taught you how to follow a lead and made you work together in lock step to make partner dancing look easy. The jitterbug was the precursor for me to shagging, which is big in South Carolina.  I would later go on to shag with Darius all the time at USC and I wouldn't have known how if it wasn't for Dad teaching me the basics with the jitterbug.  I will cherish this memory forever.  

 Interesting aside: 
A number called "The Jitterbug" was written for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. The "jitterbug" was a bug sent by the Wicked Witch of the West to waylay the heroes by forcing them to do a jitterbug-style dance. Although the sequence was not included in the final version of the film, the Witch is later heard to tell the flying monkey leader, "I've sent a little insect on ahead to take the fight out of them." The song as sung by Judy Garland as Dorothy and some of the establishing dialogue survived from the soundtrack as the B-side of the disc release of "Over the Rainbow".

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