Photo By Senior Airman Felicia Przydzial | Senior Airman Madalyn Kime, 22nd Security Forces Squadron entry controller, poses for...... read more read more
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MCCONNELL AIR FORCE BASE, Kan. – In 2022, Madalyn Kime’s boots hit the ground for the first time, in more ways than one.
In the beginning of the year, she broke in her cowboy boots on the hardwood floor at her local line dancing club. The simple dance is easy for many beginners and opened the door for Kime into the world of line dancing. She spent many weekends out on the hardwood, learning line dance after line dance.
Later that year, Senior Airman Madalyn Kime, 22nd Security Forces Squadron entry controller, hit the ground once again in a different pair of boots. She deployed from September 2022-April 2023 to the U.S. Central Command Area of Responsibility.
“When I heard the words, ‘You’re getting deployed,’ I was crushed,” Kime described. “I was 20 and had just started to go out and start line dancing. To find out I was leaving for a while was a different kind of feeling.”
During her time overseas, Kime was on swing shift from 2- 11 p.m. working two days then having one day off. During her off time, Kime would often walk from the dorms to the gym and, one night, on her way back, she heard a familiar beat coming from the pavilion near her dorm room.
“Almost every time I was coming back from the gym, they played ‘Church Clap’ and that was the song that always got me out on the floor when I was out with friends,” Kime said recalling the memories from her deployment. “The first time I joined them at the pavilion, I had just gotten off the phone with my mom, and I ran over there and joined in on the line dancing.”
This order of events would quickly become routine during her deployment. Kime would often spend her nights out at the pavilion with members from other nations and services. Under the pavilion is where she expanded her family.
“It’s all about learning, having fun and coming together with people you don’t know and realizing that you’re just one big family,” Kime said. “Especially when the holidays would roll around and you’re out there missing your family back home. I would go out there when I could, and you’d see me dancing like a fool with my second family. That would be the only thing I would look forward to while I was out there.”
Kime’s love for line dancing wouldn’t stop when she finally returned to McConnell. To this day, she spends most of her weekends out on the hardwood with her friends having fun and learning new dances at her local dance hall.
“To me, line dancing is getting out there with a bunch of people that you don’t know, but you also have so much in common with,” Kime said. “It’s acting like a fool and having fun doing it. It’s home to me. It got me through my deployment. It got me through heartbreak. It’s what has gotten me through a lot. It’s learning to be okay with messing up, shaking it off and doing whatever makes you happy.”
| Date Taken: | 12.05.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 12.05.2024 14:09 |
| Story ID: | 486722 |
| Location: | MCCONNELL AIR FORCE BASE, KANSAS, US |
| Web Views: | 30 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Boots on the ground: Hardwood Floor and Foreign Soil, by SrA Felicia Przydzial, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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