Here's a dance you should know

Last weekend, I had the privilege to attend a real falutin', hootin', hollerin,' countryside Flemish birthday BBQ. Not firing your gun into the air in celebration? But surely Europeans aren't country the way Southerners are!, you might say. So I thought, too, until the country music started twanging from the speakers and people actually started line dancing to In Zaire by Johnny Wakelin. There was even a song about Indians where at one point enthusiastic revelers clapped their hand over their mouth and made the "woo woo woo!" Indian noise. I was mystified. I was jealous, even. They never taught me these songs in redneck public school. "But this comes from America!" everyone told me - the lyrics had just been changed into Dutch!

Not again, I thought.

Case in point: International Women's Day, which people were shocked I had never heard of because it came from America. As I discovered, Women's Day is celebrated on March 8th and consists of all women workers getting flowers at the office. It's kind of an unofficial second Valentine's Day where men are guilt tripped into buying more stuff for the ladies. Because it's targeted specifically toward women workers, my first impression was that it had socialist or communist roots (which it did). After that it kind of made sense that people from South America, China and Central and Eastern Europe were the ones who had kept celebrating it. But I'm not so surprised it was dropped in the US: "Socialist" is a bad word these days, plus to be politically correct we'd have to have a men's day too. And a transgender day. Oh, the politically correct possibilities are endless.

In the end, of course I was completely wrong about the songs heard at the Flemish hoedown. They were totally American. Just check out the Hucklebuck and I dare you to stay in your chair and not dance along with Norton and Ralph.