Getting a Handle on Meaning of ‘Spinning’

The college sophomore in my life recently announces her intention to pursue a new, exciting hobby. Visions of stamp-collecting, chess-playing and ham radio-operating dance across my mind, then promptly exit stage right as I remember who I am speaking to.

“Forget any of those,” I say to myself but not to her. “More likely,” I decide, hope welling up, “she’s going to spend her weekends helping to build houses for the needy or deliver meals to the elderly. Oh, I’ve got it! She’s going to tutor at-risk youth.”

“I want to spin,” she said.

Spin? I suddenly get an image of my beautiful daughter dressed in a shiny tuxedo, standing under a mingy spotlight and holding two long poles on top of which plates are rotating. Not an image to warm a mother’s heart. “What are you talking about?” I ask, dreaded visions of vaudeville filling me with shame and terror.

“Spinning is what deejays do,” she tells me in that tone that mixes impatience with pity--a combination generally reserved for parents too stupid to understand what is clear to everyone else.

Trying and failing to show restraint, I suddenly explode, tossing cliche-ridden sentence fragments around like so much confetti: “Wait till your father . . .!” “Years of sacrifice . . .! “Don’t ever tell Grandma . . .!”

A week later, I get a copy of Bill Locey’s feature--this week’s centerpiece story (Page 42)--on four of the area’s hardest-working deejays. About one-third of the clubs in the county, Locey says, use deejays who appeal to dancers, often more than a band might.

“Dancers want familiar music, the sounds of well-known groups,” says Locey. “And it is the dancers who fill up the more popular clubs in the area.”

So perhaps I should calm down and accept my daughter’s new hobby. At least there are no spinning plates, pitiful and badly exploited rabbits or tawdry music halls. And there seems to be a decent living in it.

But we better never tell Grandma. Not ever.