September 15, 2005
THE BUMPS
I came of age in the 1970's. Oft ridiculed as an ersatz, post counterculture decade, devoid of merit, music, heft.
Mebbe so, but I'll stack the '70's up against the '80's any day. And, yes, I meant you Duran Duran fans, lest ye thought I was taking the Boy George crowd to the woodshed. Not I. For any reason.
At any rate, the '70's did suck for any number of reasons. Consider the Bumps. There were two of them. Actually, three.
The first Bump was the bumps my black friends in college got from ingrown beard hairs. They could get the occasional wicked rash from that. And so they used a product called Bump Free, which helped ameliorate it. They would also get a medical exemption at the Academy from shaving, which made me jealous, and so I would apply for a shaving exemption, only to have the corpsman tell me to fuck off. Lucky bastards.
The second Bump was of course cocaine. I must have used the word 4,000 times in the latter half of the decade: Dude, leave me a bump on the table. Hey, baby, here's your bump. Get your own fucking bump. If I give you a bump, can we bump?
All legitimate uses of the term. I am just thankful my septa are still separated.
Which brings us to Bump number 3. The most ignominious of all Bumps. The Bump dance. Wherein a couple would engage in the usual discotheque burlesque, but would bump the sides of their hips together. Totally fucking uncool by any standard.
It gets worse, of course. In those heady days of flexible knees, and hamstrings that did not grip up on you, a couple would actually squat, and bump whilst hunkered down like Nigerians taking a shit over a stove-in termite hill.
The shame, the shame. The worst dance of all time, including the Funky Chicken, and the Macarena.
And so I want you youngsters to ask your fave-o boomer elders if they ever did The Bump. Uncle Kyle will demur, Aunt Lisa will deny. They are fucking liars. We all did it. We went in the bathroom, did a Bump of the devil's dandruff, cringed at the black guy popping his shaving Bumps in the mirror, and went back out there and Bumped our asses off.
Now, let's talk about something else. Anything else.
I heard some rumors of some faggots bumping asses at the NOLA fest but what do I know...I'd passed out hours earlier.
Posted by: zonker at September 16, 2005 1:39 AMMemories! The Bump....oy. Disco...even more oy. I remember teaching my Grandmother "The Bump" sometime around 1977. Good times.
Posted by: Dogsdontpurr at September 16, 2005 3:34 AMSo does that mean that there won't be any bumpin at Helen?
Posted by: Moogie at September 16, 2005 6:53 AMDoes the Macarena even qualify as a dance?
Posted by: sadie at September 16, 2005 8:38 AMAlsa, I bumped.
Posted by: Jim - PRS at September 16, 2005 9:39 AMAin't it funny how doing one kind of "bump" was more likely to lead you to do the bump on the disco floor? 'Couple of bumps always turned me into Fred Astair.
Posted by: hoosierboy at September 16, 2005 10:13 AMHey, you brought it up, Cringe-Boy.
Good Gawd - pretty much anything having to do with disco makes my skin crawl.
Posted by: Elisson at September 16, 2005 11:26 AMLest we forget, the folks responsible for the Bump also brought us the Bertha Butt Boogie.
Vman, I had safely forgotten those painful memories, until this very moment.
And now, I'm gonna have to give you a bump on the side of the head. I'm sending it down with Leslie on the Magic Bus.
Posted by: og at September 16, 2005 1:05 PMI think the macarena came with cheese. Or was that olive oil?
Posted by: Moogie at September 16, 2005 3:13 PMI won a dance contest at the Orange Park Holiday Inn doin' the bump with a short little Phillipino guy. I .am.so.ashamed.
Posted by: Joan of Argghh! at September 16, 2005 6:17 PMHeh! I never did the farking bump! But, then, I spent a lot of time in the 70's stoned. I did do the dirty dog in the 60's tho'.
Posted by: Denny at September 16, 2005 11:11 PM"...like Nigerians taking a shit over a stove-in termite hill."
Lucky for me, even back then, I didn't have the knees to do it quite that vigorously.
However, it was a dance that even a no-talent white boy like me could do, and that's saying something.
Posted by: Patton at September 17, 2005 2:43 AMI bumped into you a few times. As I recall there were never enough bumps and that made for a bumpy ride. But the Nigerian shitting metaphor goes right into my top ten Velocicliches ever.
Posted by: rankin' rob at September 17, 2005 11:22 AMMy older sister, as a skinny young girl, once did the bump with a larger friend and the bump sent her flying across the room. This being the dancing bump not the cocaine one but that probably would have sent her flying across the room too, come to think of it.
Posted by: kookychick252 at September 17, 2005 2:08 PMWell, if you lived in Memphis and watched Wendy Armistead do the DOUBLE bump - (forgot about that one didn't you) - you'd have another opinion of THAT bump! It's been 30 odd years and the image of that womans gyrations still causes a sweat!
Yes, the "toot" bump. One word for that - bankruptcy!
As for the shaving bump, I was the only white guy on Al Greens tour bus for a year and a half (73-74) Two words - "Magic Shave" - All the bruthas in Al's band used it ON THE BUS for their shaving bumps and jesus did it stink!
I miss Wendys bump. The other two can wait.
"Bump" used in reference to coke....must be a southern thing; first time I've heard it used. We referred to lines of coke, or hits, or snorts.
As for the dancing bumps, I avoided anything remotely related to the disco movement like the plague; the music was horrid and the polyester fashions made me cringe. My tastes ran to Indian bedspread skirts, an old lace tablecloth worn artfully as a shawl, leather sandals, faded blue denim workshirts (sleeves rolled up and shirttails tied at the waist); but at work I had to do the Mary Tyler Moore thing. Matching slacks and sweaters and scarves. Oh, God...the scarves.
Hash, anyone?
Posted by: Trish at September 19, 2005 5:41 PM