Dipping

I have absolutely no sense of rhythm, choreography, or fair dance play, and so of course grew up to become the faculty advisor to the Swing Dance Club for two years.

I'm hard to stop when it comes to my own low limits. When I was eight, I asked for dance lessons. My parents, well aware of my dyscalculia even though the educational and learning disability community weren't, saw the screaming fits and utter failure on the horizon. They refused.

What I can do is flourish. There is a great deal of flourish to swing dancing... if you do it completely wrong. I like it anyway.

When the time came for my pilot husband and I to declare Our Song, we had a problem, for Our Songs are supposed to alight upon a couple in organic, romantic fashion-- under a bridge in Paris, for instance, or at the very least in the backseat of a Fiat. We had neither of these.

What we did have was The Buble. I played "Come Fly With Me," which has planes and honeymoons and... The Buble. My husband issued tacit approval, and I overcame the fact that our first dance would include the word "toot." The parents in the hall would recognize the song; their children, the performer.

I demanded actual dancing. None of this clamp-and-sway for the incompetent.

Fletch The Extremist, unicyclist, dancer, and man about town, took us under his great wing at the rehearsal dinner, snapping his fingers and providing instruction and sighing a lot. When the time came, we entered the reception hall to applause, posed at center floor, and began to negotiate. Not the dance floor. With each other.

We had a Big Ending planned, one consisting of running and leaping, one which the groom wanted nothing to do with. "We're taking it out," he said as the introduction wound down.

"No, we aren't!" The air was rarified.

"It's out!" Angels were cheering 'cause we were together.

"We already practiced it!" We twirled; all cheered. "See. Gotta give the people a show."

"We already gave them free booze. They don't want anything else."

The final pack-up was on the way. "It's in!" I backed up twenty feet and ran at him; he caught me on one hip, swung me around to the other one, then set me on the floor again. It happened so fast the photographer didn't even catch it.

We dipped. "Oooooooh," went the guests. Not bad, for no lessons.