Dancing is highly overrated. It's only good as a precursor for a love scene in a movie or maybe as a little therapeutic exercise to unlock that knee replacement you had three years ago.
Of course I don't refer to hip hop, aerobics, ballet or tap dancing and those other professional genres of body movement. That's different. That's art. I'm talking about the ambling and stumbling across the Centennial Hall stuff.
Of course I say that because I have been known to suck at dancing on occasion. Jive, two-step, an occasional waltz will attract my attention.
The bride almost sought a divorce though, whence she discovered I wasn't capable of quick stepping my way through a polka. But she recalled the oath about better and worse, fox trot and rhumba so we stuck it out and I agreed to engage in social dance lessons one winter in an attempt to save face and marriage. The marriage lasted, the polka didn't, but we learned a killer military schottische (thanks Bob) and how to waltz the way Strauss intended, not the way Larry, Moe and Curly intended.
But I had a lot to unlearn. My incompetence on the dance floor went waaay back, to earlier school years when we were obligated to learn some social dance skills. At that time we did dance things en masse like the stroll the forerunners of the line dances that gained some popularity a few years back.
We even tried square dancing as kids and young adults again to no avail, which was particularly galling since I had an uncle who was fairly well known in those squares and circles as a damn good square dance caller of some renown.
Heck, people even paid him to be a kind of square dance DJ/caller/jokester or what have you.
I was in a school group on two different occasions when aforementioned Uncle Earle arrived on the scene to deliver lessons. About 20 minutes into the chamber of horrors my head was spinning. I thought football play calling was tricky square dance instruction adherence was downright impossible! Of course aforementioned uncle loved to stop the music and point out that "I suggested it was star left and circle through, dear nephew so I suggest you move left, not right." He wasn't that diplomatic back in those days.
Of course that would draw guffaws from former friends. So I would circle left and then do one of them there allied-man or allemande rights, only my hand caught in Donald Dolo's trucker's wallet chain on the way, which dumped me on the floor and out of the So You Think You Can Dance nomination consideration. Hey, anything for a little comedy relief. I do what I can for humanity and for a potential scene stealer for the next generations of Larry, Moe and Curly Joes.
So do I watch Dancing With the Stars? Of course I do and I marvel at how the ordinary klutz star types turn into whirling fox trot devils. Maybe there is hope for the bunny hop in me yet! If not, well, I can always blame the dance partner. She just can't follow my intricate manoeuvres.
In the meantime, let's all get down and boogie the night away as soon as it warms up, OK?
