Song: "Last Dance" by Donna Summer

The Event: Working at Country Club for a Summer

For one summer, I worked in the kitchen of a Country Club in my native land of Cape Cod.  Mainly I worked for the catering staff, being a server at different functions.  Their biggest functions that occurred with the most regularity were weddings – handling about two or three every weekend. 

The first one I worked was a bit of a disaster as I was unfamiliar with the giant trays we used and had to smile while hot au jus slalomed off the plates, down the tray and finally settling onto a nice spot on underneath my collar. 

It was a harried night that I was looking forward to being over when my supervisor suddenly perked up.  “Ah, it’s ‘Last Dance’, it’s almost over.”  I had no idea what he was talking about, but he said that at 90% of the weddings he worked, this was the last song. 

True enough, during the course of that summer I noticed that about 9 out of every 10 weddings closed their parties with “Last Dance” (truth be told, the other 10% was pretty much comprised of other family friendly disco songs – as if disco’s enduring legacy is to act as last call to drunken uncles and underage groomsmen across the land). 

So every time I hear that song, I think back to that summer, working with a bunch of drunken degenerates while serving food to a bunch of arrogant blue bloods, like Caddyshack but with less hilarity and not nearly enough Kenny Loggins. 

Furthermore, it also now has provoked a Pavlovian response in me where I hear that song and start watching for people to leave and have to stop myself from grabbing up plates of half eaten food.