Soupy Shuffle: GANGNAM STYLE!

I'm not the first one to point out that legendary entertainer Soupy Sales originated the Gangnam Style of dance. He left out the horse-riding arm movements for the most part, but the legs are the same. Like Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves, he rode freehand, which is much more dangerous and daring. 

There was something likeable about Soupy. I remember having lunch in the den and Soupy admonishing me to eat the crusts on my sandwiches "because they're just as good as the rest of the bread". He was in Detroit at the time, so I must've been about five. Soupy was also infamous for asking kids to mail "all those little pieces of paper" from their parents' wallets to his address. He netted tens of thousands before being reprimanded with a suppressed chuckle. (Let's not get into the naked girl who appeared at the door during a sketch on live TV.)

So why would I even want to look back on my for-the-most-part-wretched-and -miserable childhood? There were a few bright moments, but the one person I really loved and related to went crazy and died.  I don't relive my childhood now: I reboot it through the sunny freedom of frolicking with my grandkids. I don' t know what might have happened to me without them, but I suspect I would not have made it through 2005.