Whenever I read the columns by my Napa Valley Register friend and colleague Jennifer Huffman about a working mother raising her children, I give them my undivided attention.

Much like my own daughter raising kids while working a full-time job, Jennifer travels that road with a smile and love for her children as she consigns fatigue to a shelf because her kids come first. The other day, Jennifer’s colunm related her experiences as a chaperone at a middle school dance. She boldly admitted that she was suspicious of those 11-year-old kids — particularly the boys!

Well Jennifer, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’d wager that nine out of 10 of those boys came to the dance under duress, kicking and grumbling and handcuffed to moms who wanted to expand their sons’ social skills.

Jennifer’s story took me back a long way — to Ridgewood, Queens, New York, in the late 1940s.

I lived two doors away from a pretty blonde of my own age named Linda in those years when boys played with other boys, and girls with girls, on Catalpa Avenue. As we attended different elementary schools, our paths really never crossed. That is, until we entered the same high school.

Linda loved music and dancing and she loved people. She wrote a column for the school newspaper and became pep leader of the Grover Cleveland Brownies (our school colors were a dazzling brown and white; I always wondered where that color combination came from.)

My great love was baseball and at every home game at Farmers Oval we’d be cheered on by Linda, her Brownies and the school band. Eventually, we became friends.

Linda asked me to join her at one of the school’s dances. With a smile I politely refused, using a Jerome Kern line out of an old 1935 Broadway hit musical “Rosalie.”

“Can’t dance,” I said. “Don’t ask me!”

But Linda never gave up on me, and in our junior year I ran into an academic roadblock that proved my undoing. I could not for the life of me catch on to the principles of physics — you know, weight, volume and density. One day, Linda joined me on my front stoop and unraveled the secrets of that subject for me.

On that stoop, my heel was resting on a pillow, as I had sprained it badly in a ballgame at Farmers Oval. So I was sort of a captive audience the day Linda helped me get on the road to a passing grade in physics.

I knew I owed her big time. When that ankle healed and I was back playing third base for the Indians again, she asked me after a game if I’d accompany her to the next school dance. What could I say?

I warned Linda that I really was no dancer.

“Everyone can dance,” she lauged. “It’s easy!”

So there we were at our high school gym. The school jazz band opened with songs of the time like “Ballerina,” “Heartaches,” “Manana,” “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” and even a great Buddy Clark hit called “Linda.” My partner danced away as I clumsily tried to keep up with her with my two steps left, two steps right, ruining her dancing slippers and bruising her toes, I feared.

Finally, at a welcomed break, Linda and I sat at a table drinking Coca-Cola. Linda, brave but bruised and with a “never again” look on her pretty face, said, “Now I believe you.You really can’t dance.”

She went on to say how odd life was.

“I see you playing third base, diving, spinning, twisting and pirouetting on a baseball diamond, but here on a dance floor you move like you’re wearing deep sea diver’s boots!”

I smiled a sad smile for ruining Linda’s evening and for crunching her toes. All I could say was, “I’m sorry Linda, but I told you I can’t dance!”

Ev Parker can be reached at evjenpar@mailbug.com or 224-9956.