The Chicken Dance or The White Clam?

To whomever Steve and I announced our wedding plans the inevitable question would be,"Are you going to have a chicken dance?" What came to mind was as a child I saw our neighbor, Mrs. Norton and my father cut the heads off the chickens we raised and as the blood spurted out from their headless necks they danced in their last spasms of life. No, this was not a forced dance of a bird. I'd ask what was a Chicken Dance, and each time the person would place their hands in their arm pits and start flapping their arms, explaining it was like the Electric Glide and the Macorina. I'm not sure which image was more troubling. I was stunned the first time watching an adult in my house display such movement, speechless each time afterward.

I had not heard of a Chicken Dance and once again I felt I had fallen from a crack in the universe, perhaps a black hole and had landed in a place where everyone around me assumed I was from the same clan, yet I knew not what that culture was. Perhaps I had just missed out when I lived in California. I asked my friends there. No one had heard of it. But as I queried about, I received more information about what constitutes a chicken dance and I received numerous youtube videos demonstrating the phenomenon.

No, we did not have a chicken dance nor did we have a Chicken Dance at our wedding.

But recently I went to a pizzeria in Litchfield and found this item on the menu. It brought back all the memories of my lost cultural experiences.