About 3 weeks ago, I got a call from Oliver asking me if I wanted to join him and some other friends in something called a “flash mob.”  The first flash mob I could recall was this one to The Sound of Music, which took place in Central Station Antwerp, Belgium:

But ours was not to The Sound of Music.  Oh no.  Ours was to Janet Jackson.  Yes, that Miss Jackson if you’re nasty.  And not just any Janet Jackson songs.  “Rhythm Nation” and “Miss You Much.”

My initial reaction was, “Are you crazy!?  There is no way on God’s green earth that I would, in a public place and on video, attempt these dances!”  I mean, please take a good look at these video snippets and try to do just a couple of these moves.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.

All done?  Great!  Anyway, with a little prodding, I got to thinking.  How many times in my life would I ever get to be involved in something like this, especially with my best friends?  And so, thinking of how much fun this crazy event would be, I changed my mind and jumped in like a lunatic.  To make things easier, the choreographers emailed us some videos like the one below so we could learn the dances before the rehearsals.  Oh yes, there were numerous rehearsals.  This was no joke.

While it’s true that they really simplified these routines for us, pulling this off was still very challenging for us non-dancers.  Trust me, I practiced a lot in my den.  My neighbors still have a resentment!  But I digress.  Here are some photos from rehearsals.

Then of course, we showed up at the Grove to put the whole thing together. Here is the first performance, which I think was meant to be more a dry run.

After lunch, we all gathered back about two hours later to do another one. And this time Janet showed up to cheer us on! She actually came to watch our second performance, where, as you’ll notice, there were a lot more people.

You can also see her in the video looking down at the whole thing from a balcony just above us.

This morning, I am left with the memory of that amazing event.  We worked hard to be a part of something I don’t think any of us will ever forget, and we did it for no other reason than to have fun and get to spend some time with each other.  Oliver is leaving to head back to London in a little over a week, and I will miss him much.  Some people may have Paris, but we will always have The Grove.