On Square Dancing

Sarah Kogod highlights a facet of Nationals pitcher Craig Stammen that isn't understood too well outside of West Central Ohio:

Craig Stammen was on the radio with Holden and Danny yesterday, and was asked which of his Nats teammates’ weddings was most impressive.
“Ross Detwiler’s was pretty fancy,” the right hander replied. “It was a little different style, but he had it going on. It was pretty cool; I had a good time there.”
Michael Morse will be so disappointed.
“It’s nicer than the ones I’m accustomed to,” he continued. “Coming from the middle-of-nowhere Ohio, we’re used to square dancing and having a buffet.”

Square dancing?
“Where I’m from, it’s like a big tradition,” Stammen said. “That they have some square-dancing music going on, and everybody knows how to do it, too.”
Stammen went on to say that his moves are “a little rusty,” but scored himself an 8 out of 10. And there’s no need to worry about his lady friend.
“Oh yeah,” he said, when pressed on his skills. “I can do-si-do my partner just fine.”
The pitcher learned his promenades and swings like most of us. In gym glass.
“When you’re in, like, fifth grade in grade school, I remember for PE class, one of the days was learn how to square dance,” Stammen explained. “And I remember being so mad because I wanted to play, like, dodgeball or basketball or something, you know? And we had to do square dancing. I guess they were just getting us ready for all the weddings we were going to have to go to in the next 10 years.”

I've been to a few weddings in Stammen's neck of the woods, and I can vouch that a couple of square dances are pretty standard fare.  I've participated as the clueless last person added to fill a square a couple of times.  But I did cause a kind of funny scene (it wasn't too funny for one guy) on one of those occasions.  We were at a co-worker's wedding, and I got recruited into a square.  They were doing the "Farmer's Daughter," where each of the guys goes around to the other guys in the group, knocks on his forehead, does something like mess up his hair, pull our his shirt or pick him up and turn him upside down, then he dances with that guy's partner.  So after one guy was knocking on a co-worker's husband's forehead and as the caller was giving the instructions, I yelled out, "kick him in the nuts."  To everyone's surprise, the guy did it.  Nobody else could figure out why he did it, and I couldn't stop laughing.  Luckily, the victim wasn't badly injured, and I later fessed up to being the cause of the incident, but that is pretty much the highlight of my square dancing experience.