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Preparedness – the mark of a good scout, and me.  Last week I decided I needed to wear sweat bands to dance class.  This week I thought better of that.  I wasn’t sure I was ready for the Bjorn Bork look.  Instead, I found a nice, light, patterned, all cotton, long sleeve shirt with button down cuffs, which I fastened tightly around my wrists to prevent additional sweat from rolling into my “ooh, too” moist palms.  There was a time you could get out of the draft with palms like mine.

Under this shirt I donned one of those garments Carol refers to as, “wife-beaters”.  You know the ones I’m talking about.  The kind Marlon Brando wore as Stanley Kawalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire”.  Brando carried off the sensual brute like I could never do, “Stella!, Stella!”   I tried it, but mine came off like Professor Frink of the Simpson’s, “Stella? Stella? kvork a wham, oiiiiii!” - more sissy-like than brute.

Next, I borrowed one of Carol’s “new” black and white-checked , terry dish towels, that our neighbor, Miss Vicky, had given her on her most recent birthday.  Which, I might add, I remembered in time this year – thanks of course to intercepting Miss Vicky’s gift before Carol got back from shopping.  This towel I neatly inserted into my pocket, where, with a flourish I could whip it out and mop the flop sweat from my brow.  It worked marvelously at the ballroom. (Carol made me boil it when we got back home.)

I had been having a little inflammation problem which comes with the diabetes territory so I popped a little prednizone in the afternoon before class.  I followed that up with a couple of puffs on my asthma inhaler (it’s springtime, I get a little wheezy when I work out.).  Ok, let’s face it and call it what it was: I was hopped-up on steroids by the time I got to class!  Like my hero, Roger Ramjet, I had the strength of twenty atom bombs for a period of probably close to 20 seconds.  Actually, it lasted the entire 90 minutes of class, and of course kept me awake all night. Just one of the little side effects of prednizone.

90 minutes of non-stop dancing – just a quick slow down to exchange partners each dance.  We exchanged names and a few niceties.  Most common nicety I heard was, “You don’t sweat much for a fat guy.”  Still 90 minutes is a long time.  A couple of years ago I ran a 10 mile jog in 75 minutes.  That works out to about 12 miles in 90 minutes.  No wonder I am so tired after all this.  Still, I was proud of the fact that I remembered every person’s name that I danced with: Donna, Chrissy, Mary, non-wife Carol, Danielle, Beth, Jan, Bob – I think he was gender confused, but he was a good dipper.

You should have been there as we did the “Fast” Foxtrot (do foxes really trot?), “Slow” Foxtrot, Waltz, Swing/Lindy ( I like that one because you get to throw the lady out and yank her back in - kinda like the “whip” at the roller rink.), Polka (skip that one and toss me a sausage and beer), Texas 2 Step ( with all that folderol in Texas I am sure it takes 2 steps to do anything, and they probably wear hip waders to boot), and  a plain “Swing”.  I’m working up a sweat just thinking about it.  Still, you should have been there - if for no other reason than to break the fall of that guy I knocked over during the Swing/Lindy.

In the end it really isn’t about me.  It’s about doing something you are not very good at just to be able to say, “I love you, Carol”.

Till next time – leave an opening on the dance card for me.