The Waltz They Still Remember

There is a reason Ferris Bueller’s Day Off has never left us. Sloane is effortlessly cool, Ferris is legendary, and Cameron is a cautionary tale. When Ferris heads up the expedition to stop and look around lest they miss the good in life, Chez Quis makes the list of destinations. The full line-up is a baseball game, an art museum, a white tablecloth lunch with dignified adults, and an occasion to be among the good people of Chicago at large - to “Shake it Up, Baby Now” in the streets. It’s a movie that gives hope. The garage window comes later, when all that pent-up capacity in Cameron finally has to find its own outlet and takes a priceless Ferrari with it. Every parent who grew up laughing aloud at that scene now has to travel back in time to be able enjoy it. At our age now, our own teenagers come to mind. We hear the details Cameron shares about his parents in a new light. The cautionary tale hits a little more real.

That is the thing about young people that the whole audience connects with, young and old: tweens and teens are already leaning upward. They have capacity for formation before any formation begins, and the only question is whether someone will hand them the tools they need first or whether their big moments will arrive first and find them empty-handed.

In a chemistry unit on energy, I stumbled into passing along one of these tools at the right time while teaching my students the waltz. We calculated the energy content in food calories and that of exertion in joules. I picked the waltz because I thought it would be a fun exertion. The students loved it so much it became a quiet tradition. With five minutes left in class, desks got pushed aside, a song went on, and we danced - just a quick waltz before the bell. Looking back it did feel like a mini version of playing hookie. At the outset of that lesson, I recall be shocked to learn that not one of those students had ever been asked to take a partner’s hand and dance before. I’d been raised in the Cotillion southeast; I figured surely some of them would already know the waltz. I proceeded to teach amid blank stares and then all the way through to when they loved it completely and without any of the self-consciousness you might expect from a room full of seventh graders. It was the right moment for something forward-looking, something of the genuinely good variety. A taste of what the full day off for Ferris Beuller included.

Last week I ran into two of those students in a coffee line. Sloane (not Peterson) and Piper are seniors in college now. I had my arms around both of them before I even processed what was happening. They asked if I still teach and wanted to know how things were going, and then Sloane said, completely unprompted, something I was not prepared for: she still remembers when I taught them that waltz. Piper chimed in to say she still shows people how to do it, at formals and weddings and whenever the moment calls for it. That moment and the conversation about it with my friends after sitting down to our drinks made it clear to me. Cotillion had given me (and I had given my science students) something worth knowing for a lifetime. That’s what Cotillion is for - no need to skip school to feel that forward-looking fun. No need to then roll back the odometer and hope nobody notices.

Capitol Cotillion is where Topeka’s kids get the keys before the moment counts. September through April, grades 2 through 8. Your Cameron deserves to look to the future with hope and encouragement. He can skip having to crumple the Ferrari to get there.

Season 3 is open now at capitolcotilliontopeka.org.

I used to tell those kids way back then that I wished they had a Cotillion. It evolved into telling them I wished I could start one. That morning in the coffee line was a sweet occasion to round out those remarks. Telling Sloane and Piper that I did finally build the Cotillion I wished for was a new kind of joy for me. I wish it on everyone reading this post. Here they are from that time period, in the same hallway they spilled out into after the waltzes. This photo was a gift from Piper’s mom after she heard about our coffee shop conversation.