Best Dance Memories – An inauspicious beginning

This blog serves several purposes, one of which is to make other blog writers feel better about their competence in comparison. Another important purpose is more personal: it’s a medium for documenting things that I don’t want to forget, even if I’m likely to forget that I documented them here. And that’s why I’m doing this short series on “Best Dance Memories.” If you find anything in them interesting at all, then that’s a plus, but I recognize that these posts are the equivalent of old home movies and so you should feel free to fast forward through them.

Best Dance Memory #1 – Our First Dance

The exact date of our first public dance is not recorded anywhere, although the year is rumored to be 2006. The actual date has mercifully been stricken from the Historical Records (if not from our hysterical memories). I know that we’d gotten a fair number of lessons under our belts, but were exceedingly trepidatious about our first outing into the real world of dance, and with good reason, as it turns out. 

The dance was at Midland’s Petroleum Club, during the golden years of the Ballroom Dance Society when the turnout was north of 100 people and dances were hoity-toity affairs well-stocked with tuxedoed doctors and CEOs and sparkly ladies, all riding the trendy waves of Dancing With The Stars (which itself was feeding on the residual vibes of Shall We Dance). Remember how we all wanted to ride mechanical bulls and live in Houston and have big hair like Debra Winger after seeing Urban Cowboy? Neither do I, but the phenomenon would have been similar, if it had existed.

We were intimidated from the get-go (likely being the only people there who used that phrase), not knowing anyone well enough to do more than flutter a wave in their general direction. We finally worked up the courage to get on the dance floor – I don’t recall the type of dance – and literally froze, as if our brains were completely mystified by the concepts of feet and rhythm – and we backed off the floor and retreated to our table. I’m not sure we ever ventured onto the floor again that night…I’ve managed to block most everything else out of my memory.

Looking back, it’s amazing that we kept going. But we learned a lasting lesson. We can now empathize with people who are just beginning to learn to dance, and we’re more quick to encourage them than we might otherwise have been.