Dance for Your Supper
One of our New Year’s Resolutions a few years ago was to dance more! Our excuse had always been that the places to dance were smoky and we don’t smoke. We’d taken a whack at ballroom dancing lessons at a Jr. College, but only went once because I just wanted to dance with Terry, my husband, and ended up having to dance with a bunch of other sweaty, old men in whom I didn’t know or care to dance with. So when my husband saw line dancing lessons advertised in our local newspaper, he signed us up! The classes were held at Jolly’s, a local tavern/restaurant and since Washington State prohibits smoking in all bars and restaurants we knew we’d be spared smoky air.
Ahh, line dancing!! I actually took my first line dancing lesson in Nashville, at the Wild Horse. I was on a business trip and my friends invited me to join them and I line danced my face off! Sweatin’ like a pig on a rotisserie, I was in heaven, moving with the crowd of a couple hundred, real cowboys and cowgirls.
The lessons Terry read about in the newspaper, were to start on a Wednesday at 7 pm sharp. So, donned in our cowboy boots, we paid our $7 each and waited for our first lesson! There were about twenty people in the class, mostly women.
The name of the dance, we learned that night was the Tush Push. If you line dance, you probably know that the Tush Push is not a beginner dance, but with Nashville under my cowgirl belt, let’s just say I was a few steps ahead of my gringo husband in our first lesson. No, on second thought, let’s say, my six foot, three-inch husband towered over everyone on the dance floor as he managed to dance in pretty much the wrong direction most of the night! (He said he felt like he did when we were visitors at an Episcopal Church service and we unfortunately sat in the front row and didn’t know the stand up, sit down rules at the service.) He was embarrassed.
Because he did so poorly in his first lesson, he didn’t have nearly as much fun as I did being able to master the dance in about 15 minutes. He didn’t want to go to the classes anymore, but said he would try it one more time. He also informed me that if he was as bad at the next lesson, he would quit, but would take me every week and just sit on the sidelines and watch me. Well I didn’t want that! That would not be fun! I wanted him to dance with me, not watch me dance by myself!
Before that crucial second class, my plan was to set my timer for 15 minutes BEFORE dinner every night so I could teach him the steps. I figured his reward for the 15 minutes would be dinner. We could practice together in the comfort and seclusion of our living room and once he’d memorized the order of the steps, he’d turn that embarrassment into pride (ego’s opposite of embarrassment is pride). I thought he’d be willing to do that, but trying to get through that male ego enough to teach him the dance so he could get into the zone of the dance and enjoy the sport, didn’t work.
That was four years ago and we haven’t been on a dance floor since. I realized it doesn’t work to hold a meal over a man’s head, who married me because the way to his heart has always been through his stomach. I wonder if I should try again. After all it’s a new year. Maybe I can think of something else to use besides food do to get him to do the Tush Push.