My younger brother was a real comic as a teenager. Night after night, doing the dishes after supper, his song-and-dance routines used to get the rest of us just splitting our sides with laughing.
(Notice I’m not telling you my brother’s name? — that’s because I enjoy my life and limbs intact, and would prefer to keep it all that way, even if he finds out that I’m telling about his entertaining teenage years!)
As I recall, he did a great straight-faced parody of different tunes from our parents’ collection of funny old LPs — I can still almost hear him singing the Big Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace” in a basement-deep voice, doing a cool little jive step, making goo-goo eyes at his dish-towel dance partner.
And there was a sort of Russian-inspired squat-kicking dance routine he did sometimes, and an Al Jolson (“Swanee River” era) impression… but my all-time favourite After-Dinner Show was when my brother danced the Charleston.
See, he’s a tall man, my younger brother.
And he was one of those tall skinny impossibly-long-legged teenagers.
So you can just imagine how that whole Charleston loose-jointed, leg-sliding, knee-crossing fast Roaring Twenties jazz-baby style llooked when those long legs got flying!
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