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The year was somewhere in the idyllic 1950s. Baby Boomers — the largest generation in American history — were entering their teens. You were probably there, because guess what — there’s a good chance you were one of them.

There you were sitting in your living room, hanging onto the edge of your seat feeling all atwitter and so full of giddy jiggles that you could barely control yourself.

Then from across the plush shag carpet you saw your fuzzy black and white TV screen come into focus. Your heart instantly flipped into arrhythmia because that’s when you heard it.

American Bandstand!

No matter how old you are right this minute, you can still feel the thrill of it. You know the truth of this as those old sensations have never left you. This was your show. Designed for you and only you, its magnetism utterly lost on your parents and even more on your grandparents … who, bless their ancient shriveled hearts, dwelled upon another, very lonely, dry and quiet planet.

Then like a bolt of lightning, you heard the theme music. It revved up just as the smiling—beaming!—face of Dick Clark came into view. Remember him? He was the 26-year-old who somehow—miraculously—never grew any older than 26.

Over the decades none of us ever figured out why that was, but one day longevity did, in the end, catch up with Dick. In 2012, he finally departed this earth undoubtedly with the same wonderment of dancing teenagers still plastered over his eternally buoyant countenance. If we kids had had the vote back then, Dick Clark would have been—hands down—the president.

American Bandstand was our TV classroom; our Music 101-110. We may not have mastered the words to the American Constitution, but we knew by heart every word to every single song on the hit parade. If only the Department of Education had figured out this musical secret, we kids would have memorized every mathematical equation with the speed and ease of a song sung by Barry Manilow. And guess what? The D of E has still has not figured it out.

With keen eyes we girls studied the outfits the cool chicks in Philadelphia were wearing. But, alas, for us it was nothing short of demoralizing. Their Philadelphia cool was so much cooler than our Austin cool.

Okay, so I wore four crinolines at a time, one on top of the other. That wasn’t the issue. It was what I put on top of those starched-stiff slips that fell short. Repeatedly my dreams of being a polished jet setter were quashed flat and it wasn’t even my fault. You see, I was an innocent fashion risk because Wallace’s, Fantle’s and Marvin’s were so hopelessly overdue in the Groovey Game.

This opining lasted only moments, however, because once the teenyboppers bounced onto the TV dance floor, we kids in Austin were one with them, our feet in perfect harmony. I mean, come on. Just because we dwelled in the great frozen Northland didn’t mean we didn’t know the steps. We were bouncy poetry in motion.

The first American Bandstand broadcast to sixty-seven ABC affiliates. It featured images of clean-cut teenagers dancing to the not-so-clean Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” This shock of malevolence caused mothers across those sixty-seven ABC affiliates to throw up their arms in despair fearing that their children—the very ones they had birthed after hours of agony—were now headed straight to hell in a hand basket. Everywhere pious Sunday School teachers shrieked in stark disbelief as they pulled out their tightly permed hair believing Beezlebub had taken over. And the nation’s teachers recoiled in denial that their once orderly worlds would ever again be on the straight and narrow. Meanwhile we ecstatic teens dived into the fervent world of bump and grind, twirl and whirl, and dance till you drop. Young life didn’t get any better.

Looking back, those outrageously fun dance fests now seem so tame, so innocent, so naive. Ultimately, though, to my knowledge not one of us kids ended up in hell. At least not that I know of. Although … now that I think about it, there was that one kid who named his firstborn Beezlebub.