“I Wanna Dance With Somebody” Whitney Houston #AtoZChallenge

This post didn’t turn out the way I planned.

I was going to write something about how maybe it was growing up in the 80s or maybe it was all the MTV we were watching, but my cousins, my sister and I all thought it was our duty to make up dance routines to our favorite songs and entertain the adults at family gatherings.

We would pop in a Whitney Houston cassette and try to recall as many moves from the “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” video as we could. After about an hour of choreography and rehearsal, we would force our families to line up chairs in the living room and watch us. If we were lucky, our Uncle Tim would have his video camera and we could get the whole thing on film. You know…for when we were famous.

Then I was going to talk about how much we all loved Whitney Houston back then. I idolized her for pretty much all of 1986 and 1987. I had a poster of her hanging on the back of my bedroom door, and sometimes I would just stare at it and try to figure out what made her so amazing. I mean, her voice obviously, but there was something else…what was it? Her eyes, her smile, her glorious head of fake hair?

I also thought about adding in how “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is one of my favorite songs to sing at karaoke, but only if my friend Heather sings with me. She took vocal lessons as a kid, so she sings much better and louder. She drowns out my terrible singing, which means I get to stand up there and pretend I’m Whitney Houston for three minutes with minimal embarrassment.

But, sigh, that post never got written. I had notes written down with every intention of fleshing it out Sunday afternoon. But Saturday night my husband and I went to a friend’s birthday party and I drank too much. Actually, it wasn’t that I drank too much, it’s that I drank the wrong thing; vodka and Red Bull, which I never drink but somebody kept buying them for me and this lady ain’t gonna turn down a free drink.

I woke up yesterday morning feeling like a pile of human jello. My brain was incapable of forming basic thoughts. I laid on the couch and ate Costco croissants while watching Chicken Little with my nine-year-old.

I’m sorry, Whitney. This is not the tribute you deserve.Like Bobby Brown, I let you down.  I guess all I can say is this … I will always love you.