Dancin' Fool

The initial draft of this post has been sitting in my account untouched for, oh, close to two months now: apparently when I promised I would talk about it "soon" back in mid-October, I was being speaking in geological terms. Anyway, what better time to finish it up than when I can't think of anything else to write? So, without further ado, I give you: my adventures in line-dancing.

Back on October 15, the church Singles department had a line dancing class, taught by one of the older gentlemen in the department. I had been looking forward to it for a while, since I never get a chance to go dancing anymore. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of seeing me dance, well, let me just say this: a finer example of intentional spaziness has rarely been seen on this or any other earth.

When it comes to dancing, I have always operated on one theory, and one theory alone: act as goofy as I want, and public perception be damned! I rarely, if ever, find myself embarrassed by my dance-floor antics; it probably helps that most of the friends I've gone dancing with aren't exactly Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers themselves; much easier to avoid the self-consciousness when I don't feel like everyone around me is infinitely superior.

Now, since this was going to be a "class" situation, peopled by lots of members of the department who didn't know me very well, I had planned on reining in my goofiness a bit; however, this inner goofball was aided and abetted by resident dancing queen Cap’n Cluck. C.C., having taken dance classes for most of her life, picked up all the steps instantly; I picked the majority of them up quickly, although I often had problems with anything requiring me to do a 360, at which time I would almost invariably turn the wrong direction. And while learning the dance moves was fun, honestly, you can only do the same steps so many times in a row before you start to lose your mind. So, lose our minds we did, to the amusement of some, and the bemusement of others; we started adding twists and turns and hops and flailing limbs and the like; okay, maybe I was the only one flailing my limbs.

Quick side-note: a few weeks later while planning a Singles party, Cap'n Bumper was trying to find out if he needed to bring some outdoor lights to help illuminate Cap'n Cluck's backyard for horse-shoes, and was asking if anyone else was wanting to play. I told him I'd be willing to embarrass myself and play; Mama Lightbulb immediately spoke up and said "I don't think you can embarrass yourself more than you did at line-dancing." I just shook my head; obviously, she was not a faithful blog monkey, and was therefore unfamiliar with my "looking foolish on purpose vs. by accident" mindset.

Now, despite such reactions as this, I did receive quite a few compliments on my dancing from several different people, both during and after, although the notes of surprise in many of their voices made me wonder how much of it was true feelings of “You’re a good dancer” and how much was actually “Wow, he can move to music without tripping over his own feet, I never would have guessed!"

The next day, during the big gathering of all the Singles before we split up into our individual classes, Freezeout was talking about how good of a time everyone had the previous night, and how he wished everyone could have been there, etc. He then said "I learned something last night": before another word came out of his mouth, I was pretty sure where he was going; sure enough, the thing that he had learned was that I could "really dance" (think that was the phrase he used; forgive me, it's been a couple of months). It was at this point that my good friend Papa Lightbulb shouted out "Yeah, he can sing too."

"I've heard that," Freezeout replied. "Say, isn't there a particular song that he sings?"

"Yes," Papa L. said, "there is."

Freezeout then called upon me to move to the center of the room and sing the Popular Song for the whole department. I gave a very truncated version of the story, since we were running long and I figured most people outside of my class didn't care all that much anyway, and then started singing. As I sang, I slowly turned in a circle, to make sure I made eye contact with each portion of the room; over the course of the song I saw several people laughing, several of the people from my class singing along quietly, and more than a few looks of utter bewilderment. One gentleman in particular looked like he was about ready to bolt for the exits; this didn't surprise me, since I had noticed the same expression on his face the previous evening every time he would look at the Cap'n and my dance stylings. Some people just have no appreciation for artistic genius, y'know?