Early Childhood Trauma

I spent 8 years at a dirty, dirty catholic school.

In 6th grade, those tender developmental stages of teenage years, my 18 fellow classmates and I were forced to volunteer at a local nursing home once a week.
Tuesdays would come and we'd be shuttled over to the nursing home to spend two hours square dancing with the elderly and incapable. The routine was familiar; a half hour of wheeling our partners and their colonoscopy bags in square dancing formations wrapped up with a half-hearted performance of the hokey pokey and chicken dance.

The caller, a 40-something pervert, would have us circle up our wheeled counterparts and create a circle in the middle of the group. He would stand inside the circle, behind all of us, and give direction to shake more or waggle more (obviously fantasizing about our young, uniformed, lithe and energetic bodies). When we left he always demanded a hug, most times packing heat.

This traumatizing and disturbing ritual created for me a terribly negative pavlovian response every time I hear polka music. One of the biggest reasons for turning down Oktoberfest this year.