If, someday, you are watching TV and you stumble upon one of those shows where people compete at dancing and it just so happens the final two contestants on this particular evening are a garden rake and me, here is what you'll want to do: Sell the house, empty your bank account, snatch that 20-dollar bill you have stashed in your sock drawer for emergencies and let it all ride on the rake.
I was a lousy dancer, I am a lousy dancer, and I will always be a lousy dancer. Play a fast song and I look like a dog shaking itself dry. Play a slow one and I look like a potted tree caught in a stiff wind.
When I'm on the dance floor, people look at me like I have 24 hours to live. I attract more pity than a barber whose customers have all gone bald.
Never in my youth did it occur to me that I two-stepped like a four-door Oldsmobile on blocks. It wasn't until I started spending my nights at places where "Play Freebird!" was shouted at barroom bands that I discovered I couldn't crease a rug let alone cut one.
That a suitcase has more rhythm than I do bothered me for the longest time. I would go to great lengths to avoid dancing. (OK, this isn't exactly true. Whenever someone asked me to dance, I'd say no.) But now as I approach 50, I can honestly say my utter inability to do the Twist and to tango, to do the Mashed Potato and to polka concerns me not the least. My two left feet and I have made peace.
The different feelings I've harbored through the years about being a horrible dancer seem to fit the findings of a Gallup
The poll asked more than 340,000 Americans ages 18 to 85 to rank on a 10-point scale how satisfied they felt about their lives. As you might expect, the 18-year-olds in the survey said their lives were dandy – especially in comparison to those in their 20s and 30s and 40s whose discontent, according to the poll, progressively deepened as they learned, I suspect, how dead serious life can be.
But what might surprise you is what the survey – published this spring in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – found next: Once they reach 50, people begin to feel happier, and the older we get, the more satisfied about our lives and about ourselves we become until at 85 we are as pleased as we were at 18.
Even though much – and maybe most – of what we fret about has all the importance of a piece of lint, we are painfully slow to admit our imperfections and to tolerate our inadequacies when finally we become aware of them. In my case it took half a lifetime for me to accept the fact that I can't dance worth a darn. Still, there are some who continue to hold out hope that somewhere in me might be a bone belonging to Fred Astaire, and like it did the other night at the VFW, their misplaced optimism isn't afraid to make itself known.
Sitting there listening to the country music coming from The Clay Creek Deaf Cowboy Band, I was having a grand time. The person across the table from me, however, kept urging me to ask my wife to dance.
This particular person is a fabulous dancer, and fabulous dancers, I've noticed, are convinced that dancing is a natural act – like bleeding. To them, if you can yawn, you can dance.
Knowing this person meant well and knowing my wife liked her toes unbroken, I smiled and shook my head at each appeal. I could tell the person had almost given up on me when someone else at our table started suggesting I ask my wife to dance, too.
It isn't easy to ignore my mom, but there is no ducking my niece. So when The Clay Creek Deaf Cowboy Band began playing the Patsy Cline song "Crazy," my wife and I hit the floor. The two of us hadn't been out there 10 seconds when another couple came spinning at us. We had barely escaped scrambling out of their way when a second couple wheeled in our direction.
Wherever we sought refuge on the dance floor, a light-footed vet and his wife found us. They were like heat-seeking missiles. Returning to my table at the end of the song, the only bright spot I could find was that I didn't get trampled by an ex-Marine who marched through Europe sticking it to the Nazis.
Crazy? To somehow have thought for a moment that I am completely devoid of grace, I must have been.