Since she was in bed by 8 PM, I was able to spend the evenings with Jorge and his family. Most of the time, we'd go to Wal-Mart or hang out at their house, watching TV and talking. One evening, Jennifer asked her mom to watch the kids so that she, Jorge, and I could go see Promethius because they really want to see it. I've never been a big fan of the Alien movies, but I was happy to tag along.
That evening, for some reason, Jorge and I got The Safety Dance song stuck in our heads. Every chance we got, you'd hear us singing, "We can dance if we want to, we can leave your friends behind..." Neither of us was a particularly good singer and neither of us was a particularly quiet singer, so you can imagine that pretty soon we started to annoy Jennifer.
Even after her very loud demands for us to shut up, we couldn't stop. I remember that we stopped for gas on our way back to her mom's to get the kids, and when she got back in the car, I'd pulled up the video on my phone while we both sang along and clapped loudly. Jennifer sighed, clearly annoyed, but she still laughed at us.
Fearing she'd start to hate me, I told her that once we got the kids, we'd be done. We both promised not to sing The Safety Dance anymore.
I stayed in the car while Jennifer and Jorge got the kids and then bucked them into their booster seats. Once Jennifer got back in the car ready to start our journey to their house, you hear my niece's tiny voice from the very back of the car start, "We can dance if we want to..."
Jorge, Jennifer, and I immediately erupted into laughter. In all fairness, my niece hadn't made the same promise Jorge and I had.
Anytime I visited after that, it became tradition for us to sing The Safety Dance to Jennifer as often and as loud as possible. The thing about Jennifer is that she always found our antics, although annoying, funny. It didn't matter how much we annoyed her, she always rewarded us with laughter. Which always made spending time at Jorge's that much better--not only did I get to spend time with my sweet brother, but his wife, my Hussy, wasn't too bad either, and it truly felt like home.
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