A little bit more than a year ago we admitted to ourselves and confessed to our addiction. We still see no sign of slowing down in sight. Meanwhile we have tried everything to control our dependency. Actually some of us were in the USA to ask for help. We found many, many 'square dance junkies' there, too, that live out their addiction in cellars, barns and in the middle of churches. Compared to addicted dancers in Germany, dancers in the USA are often older and have danced for 30 to 40 years. It's a good feeling, to know, that we can get very old and continue to enjoy good health AND our square dancing. At all of the clubs and dances we joined in the USA most of the people asked us similar questions such as: How often you meet for therapies? Does your therapist (caller) speak English? Are there many of you in 'good old Germany'!
I can only say, there are many commited (or maybe addicted) dancers and when I say many it means a really a huge number of people. During the last several months we visited more than 25 clubs of addicts in other cities, at home and abroad. Each time we were welcomed whole-hearted and everybody could put themselves in our place! It is awesome, they accepted us like we are. Full appreciation, no animosity or index finger!
At this time our bodies have adjusted to the changed way of life. Several times a week we go out for a dance, sometimes among our groups, sometimes in other cities. If the time span between two dances is too long, the following symptoms appear: anxiety, you start to put in little 'calls' to your conversations, leg flinching and if you meet a bunch of people, in your mind you start to sort them into groups of eight.
There is one new experience that is scaring us. Perhaps, we are not sure, we have commited a crime. We had placed some ads on TV, on the radio and in the local newspaper to join us during our official club 'therapies (in the ads we call it 'open houses for a new class'). Fourteen people accepted the invitation. Instead of talking about our addiction and warn them, what could happen and how square dancing could change their lives, oops, what did we do??? We were ecstatic and invited them to dance with us just for the heck of it and without a guilty conscience. Ironically people call dancers that are addicted to dance 'angel'; devil would be more accurate. We feel a little bit like a dealer that spreads free samples. Already other have become infected by the virus, perhaps we will invite some of the new students to our next group therapy in our 'Sailor's bar'.
These days we Google the internet to find out where and when we can find a new place to get cured. One more funny detail is as we told you, that we dance in other cities, where we didn't reveal ourselves as being addicted. Certainly the other dancer noticed it very quickly and their therapist (caller), too. A few tips later the caller resigned, because he could not cure us. Instead we got from the club a small tag (dangle) that we must wear. This is a sign that our dependency is not treatable. In addition we recieved an entrie in our therapy book (insider call it a friendship book). If we get more than 26 entries in this book we must send it to the European Square Dance Association. From there we get a special bar, which confirms the severity of our addiction. We think, but we are not quite sure, that we can present the entries in our book, the dangles and bars to our health insurance to get some grants for further therapies. We are hopeful that we get BIG bucks from the insurance, because square dancing clothing is very expensive over here in Europe.