Many years ago, I went to SPU, a liberal arts college in Seattle that’s affiliated with the Free Methodist church, which was socially conservative enough to forbid dancing.

Dances (large groups of people gyrating in a dark room with lots of loud music playing) were not allowed.

Strangely, “functions” (large groups of people gyrating in a dark room with lots of loud music playing) were.

Sort of.

As long as they were off campus.

And the school didn’t “officially” know about them.

But the school let people form bands (as long as no one danced to the music) and, at one point, it held a contest. At the time, the mission of the school was to turn us into “Christian Scholar Servants.” So, a few of us, who happened to like a particular style of music that involved sand, sea, and surfboards, came up with a musical group called the “Christian Scholar Surfers.”

There were several people in the group: Larry and Dave were at the core, and there were others who came and went as they were available. Dave was the lead and used his dorm room curtain rod as a microphone, Larry played keyboards, which were two electric typewriters on ironing boards, and I played bass – which was either a hockey or a lacrosse stick.

Oh – wait – I said it was a musical group.

The music, you see, came from huge speakers that were way, way louder than we could ever be, and they were fed by a cassette player playing, in this case, a song called “Motor Mania” by a group called Roman Holiday. Larry, all six feet eight of him, did that deep, deep bass at the beginning, then Dave and I came in. We practiced and practiced, and frankly, we got so good at it that it was hard to believe that Larry’s voice and keyboards weren’t making the music, or that my hockey stick, Dave’s curtain rod, and our voices weren’t making the actual notes. Timing was pretty critical at some points, and – well, here, have a listen while you’re reading the rest of the story.

One day, when we were out of school, Dave called Larry and told him there was a lip sync contest at a place called Chevy’s in Beaverton, Oregon. Did we want to come down for it?

We’d never heard of Chevy’s, but Dave explained that it was a ‘50s style diner where the food was free a couple of hours a night, but you had to pay for drinks.

Wait.

Free food?

We were so there.

Larry and I didn’t need much convincing. We packed up our stuff, drove down to Dave’s place, rehearsed a bit, piled into Larry’s car, and then went to Chevy’s.

We got everything ready, and they told us we’d be on the schedule around 8:00 or so.

It turned out that they made their money on alcohol, which none of us drank (even though Larry’s folks owned a bar), so we had water or soda, listened to ‘50s music, and just hung out.

It was a fun place to go, and for us, my gosh, it was cheap. We went to the free buffet, got some pretty decent food, ordered cokes, and listened to fun music.

I’d been in a car accident some weeks earlier, injured my back pretty bad, and had to wear a TENS unit to numb the pain to a bearable level, so even though there was a dance floor there, and people were on it, we all knew I wouldn’t be dancing.

One of the more entertaining aspects of the evening was a group of what appeared to be aerobics instructors from a local gym. They were celebrating something with what later amounted to at least 11 bottles of champagne – to the point where, even as far away from them as we were sitting, we could actually smell it. They were laughing, joking, drinking, and in general, really having a good time.

I had never seen more than one bottle of champagne consumed, but they had the table loaded like they were ordering them by the case.

Now, remember the bit about how these folks made money?

Right.

Alcohol.

And as long as they were serving it, and people were buying, they had no reason to hurry the schedule along – so 8:00 (or so) came and went.

In fact, so did 9:00 (or so).

By about 9:45, they were well into cleaning up the free buffet, and things changed a bit, because while the quantity of food was diminishing, the quantity of alcohol being served to the table over by the wall just kept increasing. It was by far the noisiest table, and by this time, you could actually feel the heat they were putting off warming up the whole place.  In fact, my glasses were slipping off my nose, and as I was reaching up to straighten them and clean a smudge off a bit, someone grabbed my arm.

My glasses cartoonishly hung in the air for a split second before clattering to the table.

I was spun out of the chair only to find my hand attached, rather firmly, to the hand of one of the aerobics instructors.

About the time I caught my balance, we were on the dance floor, and they had some very danceable ‘50s music playing just about as loud as it really needed to be played.

I looked around for help, saw blurry outlines of Larry and Dave holding up my glasses and frantically looking for me everywhere but the dance floor. Because, with my back still hurting as bad as it was, the last place I’d be would have been…

…where I was.

With limited options, I did the only thing that made sense. I cranked the TENS unit up as high as it would go until my back literally quivered, and I danced.

Three dances.

With an attractive, yet totally drunken aerobics instructor.

It was fun.

After three songs, the music stopped, and we headed back to our tables.

I collapsed into my chair, picked up my glasses, and put them on to see Larry and Dave’s faces swim into focus, their eyes as big as the little plates the buffet food was on, their jaws struggling to get off the table and at least meet their faces halfway.

All Dave could get out was, “She… you…how?” While Larry sounded like an idling outboard, “But… but… but.”

And so, I had to explain what had happened, all the while wishing I could do a “Spinal Tap” on the TENS unit and turn it up to 11. Eventually, they believed me (by this time, my shoulder was starting to hurt because she’d yanked my arm so hard), and then they both wondered if we’d actually be able to do our set. My part involved very little more than making that hockey stick look like a bass guitar, so I was good. Sure enough, at 11:00, after a lot of buildup, they called us to the stage, where Larry, Dave and I, three college students from Seattle and the Portland area, managed to knock the socks off a crowd of people enjoying music, including a few drunk aerobics instructors who wouldn’t remember a bit of it the next day.

We, on the other hand, can remember every minor detail of this epic adventure, since the strongest thing in our drinks were the bubbles in our Cokes.

Oh, the money in our hands? $75. $25 for each of us: We came in second.

Dave, Larry & Tom, of the Christian Scholar Surfers with our winnings