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LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! BOYS AND GIRLS! GATHER ROUND!
By beth | May 6, 2008
Here it is, friends! I am proud to introduce you to…
THE STIFF FIVE
Imagine, if you will (Whitney won’t), two 73-year-old politicians who have never been particularly “cool” in their lives. They’ve just won a highly competitive team Parcheesi tournament, however, and they are super stoked about it. So stoked are they, in fact, that they succumb to the impulse bubbling up within them to express said stokedness with a physical act of celebration and camaraderie - a high five.
They rear back, palms open, elbows at 90-degree angles, and concentrating on their aim, move in quickly yet cautiously toward the moment of contact with the palm of the other. Keeping their arms and hands stiff, they make contact, at which point there is an ever-so-brief pause before they put their respective hands either down by their sides or up in the air in further celebration.
Can you picture it? Ok, now try it with someone, preferrably me as I just love it to death. I don’t know what it is about it, but the stiff five makes me quite giddy.
I’m not even really sure how it started. Maybe Whitney can help me here as she was present at its creation. We were driving up to DC on Friday, and we were in rare form. At one point, I was laughing so hard that I was crying. And I was crying so much that I thought for a moment that I might need to pull over. That was when we were listening to the TV theme songs CD that Lauren had made for me, and the “Sanford and Son” song came on. Whitney started doing this dance in the passenger’s seat that cracked me up, first of all, and then immediately brought to mind the kid from “Fat Albert” who was always wearing the ski mask.
When I told her that’s what her dance reminded me of, she commenced to freak out saying, “That’s EXACTLY who I was thinking of!! HE WAS MY INSPIRATION FOR THE DANCE!!!”
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand cue hysteria.
So anyhoe, I don’t know how the stiff five started. I think it was probably an accidentally stiff five that we found particularly hilarious, and then we just started doing it over and over again, and then we named it, and then we taught it to other people. And now it’s pretty much an international phenomenon. Spread it around. You’ll love it.
Topics: dancing, music, friends, Avon Walk, movies/TV/video |