Up front, let me admit that I read only OP, not all of the ones in between.
It's simply in the nature of people that anything we do together, that we consider important, will quickly become full of
tradition. The Navy's full of it, the Army's full of it, the Church is full of it, and the Moose Lodge is full of it. Most of these traditions are confusing to the outside community. When we identify a tradition that is detrimental to the community, it is certainly a mark of the community's vibrancy that it can discard tradition in pursuit of its higher goals. Cutting the calls of "robot" to only those situations necessary to clear a crowded corridor was perfectly sensible.
Line dancing, on the other hand, is something we do
together. As the song
Dancing in the Moonlight so eloquently declares:
Quote:
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Everybody here is out of sight - they don't bark and they don't bite. .... You can't dance and stay uptight.
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. I think it's absolutely marvelous to see hundreds of kids wearing dozens of uniforms all moving together. I can't wait until my first trip to championships where it will be thousands of kids wearing hundreds of uniforms. And OBTW - a good fraction of the people watching also know these same line dances, and are probably making the same moves in their hindbrains if not their feet. The real message that these traditions send is that yes, these kids are real kids, and many of them like to bust a move just as much as anyone else.