I Tought I Could

I went to a birthday party today. It was a fortieth birthday party and it was in this cool little community center building in San Francisco in Glen Park. I'm used to the Financial District, Embarcadero, Union Square, Chinatown, the Zoo and a number of See's candy stores, but I'd never been in Glen Park before today. Its a really cute little neighborhood.

There was good beer, great barbecue, delicious cake, nice people and my contribution was...really crappy dancing. I have always loved to dance. Not in any organized or performing capacity, I just like to move to music. I have good rhythm and all through school I looked pretty good on the dance floor. There are even times I've ballroom danced and I took ballroom and folk dancing in college.

My point is, I have known dancing and loved it. I've known how to dance properly - I got A's in dance class for Pete's sake - now I suck. This dancing suckage first surfaced on a cruise the hub and I took about seven years ago. We went into the bar where they were doing line dances. "This will be easy for my dancing impaired hubby", I thought. We lined up on the floor and took our places for the Boot Scootin' Boogie. Step, step, hop, step.

I stumbled, got lost, looked around and there was the hub, merrily hopping and stepping away. He smiled at me - I nearly hit the floor. I had officially begun to suck at dancing. Today, I got on the floor and began undulating in time to the music. The music was hip hop which, love it or hate it, is easy to dance to. I was boogieing away and suddenly realized that I was boogieing away in front of people. Horrified, I boogied over to the cake table to see if there were any big crumbs I could nibble on.

I have several more dancing opportunities coming up in the next few months. I really don't want to appear on anybody's blooper reel so I'm going to have to address this problem. Watching videos seems like a possibility but nobody really dances like that. Maybe I can volunteer to chaperon a prom. I wish Soul Train was still on, I could totally learn to dance from that show. Or American Bandstand those were fun shows. But I digress - and date myself. Oh, hell, you already know I'm about to turn 55...

Maybe Ill pay some teenagers to teach me to bust a move. My niece is 18 (she turns 19 a week before I turn 55) and I bet she could show me something. When she gets back from Disneyland ( Jeez - it'd be great to be a kid. ) I'm gonna ask her. It can be my birthday present! She'll help her poor, old, creaky Auntie. I just hope she can control her natural mirth. She'd better, her birthday present might be riding on it.