WEBVTT

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After about a year of doing
ballroom dancing our studio

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teacher decided that our
group of dancers, we'd

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all started together
[INAUDIBLE],,

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that we were advanced
enough to finally Samba,

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we had been dying to do it.

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And so the day came and he
got up in front of the class

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and started to demonstrate
a few of the basic moves

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of the Samba, the
[INAUDIBLE] and [INAUDIBLE]

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and asked us, why
don't you to dance.

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I looked up and I
thought, you know,

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I've seen this dance before,
not quite as refined,

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but I remember that usually
the male relatives, when

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I was a child, after a
couple of beers and a piglet,

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would all get up
in a, kind of, line

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and do this little thing,
which I guess I can do here.

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[LAUGHTER]

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They would get in a line and
then just do this little dance,

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like this.

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And hold their hand
up, put their hand

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on their hip in the
middle of the-- oh, God,

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here they go again.

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And it was, kind of, amazing
to see the roots of that dance

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as it came through
generations of a family.

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And then at the
same time to end up

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in the ballroom dance studio.

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So this is for those uncles.

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"Samba Summer."

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Fort Valley, Georgia, 1966.

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That's when I first saw it.

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Broke, lake cake
walk of the drunken

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uncles entertaining the
ladies of the family picnic.

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One arm akimbo and
a humpback strut.

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The other stretched high
in witness, yes, Lord, yes.

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Palm out spread against
the late summer sky.

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That spirit's too
yellow and far too tight

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for any Christian child.

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I'd walk a mile if
the gal was right,

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but those hips could
kill the fella.

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One straight leg, too,
that the crooked one

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dragged through a grassy
rut edging the petunias.

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The women roll their
eyes, pluck the children

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away from the charred hibachi
and set out the coconut cream

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pies.

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You may as well go on and shoot
me, tie my heart in a knot, wait,

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judging from this limp
here, my legs already shot.

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High butt shenanigans,
uncles did it best.

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Pot-gutted, hitching
their trousers up.

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A holy grunting executed
to the bleat and hiss

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of Mitzi's seafoam
green transistor,

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common signature of the tribe.

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We're only joking,
we know we're just

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the world's custodians, full
time lovers on half pay.

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Come on girl, let's dance.

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Before this song is over, show
me what I've been working for.

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