Dance Dance Revolution
On High Scores
I kept missing the arrows, which I blamed on the shoes I was wearing—my big, hideous Sorel snow boots that, for a weekend in January in Montreal, during which the daily temperatures topped out below ten degrees, were the only sensible footwear for the job.
It’s been years since I played DDR—a teenager in my best friend’s living room on her family’s PlayStation 2. I remember getting warm enough to work up an actual sweat. Her grandma would come by and look through the French doors at us, smiling and watching us doing something that was not at all like dancing but did, in a way, feel like an art.
I’d like to say it all came back to me, but it very much didn’t. I couldn’t help but notice S. was kicking my ass. At the very least, I did well enough to pass each level.
The pad was smaller than I remember, S. said after we’d finished, and I had to agree—plus the fact that the snow made it slippery. Definitely not that I was young once, a long time ago. If I had better shoes, just watch out. Though, after our final song, I turned and noticed that no one had been watching—of course, why would they? Only I knew how it felt when I’d gotten every note.