I went, with some coercion, to a '50s-'60s dance for the Academy of Lifelong Learning yesterday afternoon. The "excusion down memory lane" was not a happy trip, although the pizza they served was good (but back in those days pizza had not made it Boondock, Indiana.
Several people, some of whom were couples married for over 50 years, danced up a storm, just the joyous body movements I always wished I knew how to make and had a partner to do it with. I watched with as much envy as ever. A couple of guys tried to get me to dance well with them, I could not. Still stiff and uncertain and locked in a time warp I would have loved to break out of but was firmly chained, never, probably, to be unlocked..
Wallflower-hood (even without the shyness about talking to all the other people wandering around) is just as lousy at 70-plus as it was at 17. And they didn't even play slow dances, not that there was anyone I wanted to slow dance with although that might have taken the edge off the dissatisfaction.
Lesson learned; but I'm a bit grumpy about it today.
4 comments:
Be outrageous with life -- barbara
Oh! Such a touching, honest, personal post that caught me completely by surprise. I never imagined you as a wallflower. Granted, I know you only by your words and profile pic (you are beautiful woman). I suppose I should have inferred you are an introvert of sorts (being one myself), but it's hard to gauge souls when they're rendered as pixels on a screen.
I consider myself lucky. Although I always loved to dance, I was too shy to dance at dances. There came a New Year's celebration when I was in my early 20's. A young lady insisted I dance with her. I demurred. She insisted. I shrank away. She grabbed me by the hand and dragged me onto the dance floor. And in that moment, as a direct consequence of her determination, I fell in love with dancing and continued dancing for decades thereafter. Funny how lives can turn on a dime...when in the right place at the right time in the company of a great heart.
And your post brought me back to a post of my own written years ago:
http://attwilightblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/lets-dance.html
It's never too late to have that special dance...
Thank you so much, Jonas. I completely agree that one person, in one moment, one gesture, can change another person's life. Sometimes, as with you dance partner, it's very positive. (As with my mother's insistance I do what I want) but far too often it's a negative -- the word that discourages a would be artist...
I'm so glad you dance.
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