Dancing With The Starz
4/05/07
Last evening my wife, Carol and I attended our first “Ballroom Dancing” class. Carol’s parents had been devotees of the craft, matriculating from the Arthur Murray program many years ago. Carol wanted to do something in honor of the memory of her recently deceased parents, and this is a fitting tribute by all accounts.
Now I am a rather large man. I tip the scales between 240 and 255 pounds depending on how many miles I have run in any given day. For those who care, I qualify for the “Clydesdale” division of runners in most road races. And, if I haven’t already mentioned it - I sweat. A lot. It is not unusual for me to sweat 10 pounds of liquid in a ten mile run. And that includes hydrating along the way. Profuse sweating, into your eyes till you are blinded by the stinging salt and other chemical releases.
Ballroom dancing turns out to be as much exercise as any run I’ve been on, if not more. Do you know how embarrassing it is to be dripping perspiration in a social setting like this? It is one thing if you only have to dance with your wife - but geometrically embarrassing when the instructor has you switch partners for every new step. There were at least a half dozen dance steps taught last night. Sweat. Buckets o’ sweat.
I had worn a blue shirt that turned dark blue at every sweat oriface. Let me tell you what the payoff is for being a weight lifter early in life. I had read those articles in the back of comic books about not being a weanie and getting sand kicked in your face at the beach. Charles Atlas had the answer for me. So I built up this magnificient set of pecs. I looked like a regular dime-store Arnold with a size 50 chest. Yet I never went to the beach much less took my shirt off in public - I could have, mind you, but I didn’t.
The trouble is, age and arthritis caught up with me, and the last time I pumped iron, Jimmy Carter was president. The real payoff: over the years those magnificient pecs turned into flab laced with gigantic sweat glands.
When Carol was nursing our daughters many years ago, she would lactate whenever the children started fussing for nourishment. Her blouse would be wet in the same places that my blue shirt was. Carol, on the one hand, was the image of a sainted mother in all her natural feminine glory. I, on the other hand, looked like a bloated whale lactating - exept not as pretty. Any mothers reading this should be warned: “Do Not Let Your Sons Become Weightlifters!”
There was plenty of talk last night about the T.V. show, “Dancing with the Stars” and our own beloved Clyde “The Glide” Drexler. There wasn’t anything about my proclivities that suggested debonair flair, talent or “glide”. In the end my fellow students voted me off the island. Still, in the words of Arnold, “I’ll be back” next week and the week after and the week after that because this is for Carol - to honor her wishes and the memory of her parents, Pete & Gladys.
However, next time I will be wearing sweat bands around my wrists and head - plus I will find a shirt that doesn’t darken with moisture and other effluents.
Stay tuned.
