This week was a pretty interesting week for me. For example, on Thursday, I partook in a strange ritual known as “dancing”. This was with my alma mater’s swing dancing club. I attended this club meeting because a member had generously given me leftover cake nearly a year ago, and I figured now’s a good time to return the plate it came on. Actually, if my memory is to be trusted (which is perfectly logical), I returned the plate shortly after borrowing it, and it magically reappeared in my cupboard a couple weeks ago. In any case, I was on a request to return the plate again and dance.
I don’t really fit in with this club, because I generally prefer the more natural form of dancing. You know, where you jump back and forth and move your arms around randomly with a silly green on your face. REAL dancing. But that other thing that claims to be dancing keeps drawing me in once every 6 months or so. Maybe it’s the challenge of learning a new skill. Maybe it’s the prospect of finding a dance partner who can stand me. I don’t know.
I entered the ballroom 20 minutes early to return the plate to the instructors who no doubt were thinking “Oh no, not that guy!”, and then I left and watched half an episode of Friends. Upon my return, there were 8 guys and 4 gals waiting to start dancing, so the numbers worked against me there. But an unusually large number of these people have never been enrolled in UND’s dance classes, though this club is usually the playtime for people who’ve taken those classes. So, that number worked in my favor. It was nice to have a lesson catered to n00bs for a change. Don’t get me wrong; I was still the worst dancer there, by far. I was the guy who nearly every time an instructor asked “Did everyone get that?” I said “No.” And the times that I did think I got it, once the practicing started, my dance partner would re-explain everything to me and confuse me until I think I got it again, and then call both the instructors over who would make me more confused than I was in the moves that I never thought I got.
At the start of the lesson, the guy instructor emphasized that the guys should lead. I guess this means that instead of copying what the girl does with her feet, I should copy what some guy near me does. But what does it really mean to “lead”? It seems to mean that the leader obeys the follower’s orders.
Anyway, the 18-year-old little girl I danced with first had this slightly annoyed look on her face the whole time, or at least she did every time I rose my eyes from some guy’s feet. She stared off into space even when there were no dancers’ feet in that space. And weirdest of all, she would frequently stop dancing and let go of my hands, and just stand there for 10-30 seconds at a time. Weird. Another girl was fun, except that she kept spinning every three seconds, and it was the same spin every time. When I asked her what that was about, she said it’s the standard move to correct everything when the guy screws up. I’d rather hear what I’m doing wrong.
And all of them tended to tell me what move they want to do and then instantly do that move, so I had to rush to get out of their way. I don’t shift gears that fast! In every previous dancing lesson I’ve ever been in, when the girl wanted to do a certain move, she’d tell me before doing it. They’d say “Spin me!” and then I’d take a measure to remember how to start a spin, and then I’d do the weird hand signal the instructor adamantly required I do, and then I’d guess my way through my steps while I’m waiting for the gal to stop spinning, and then I’d go back to copying her feet. It’s a much less jarring system.
However, this isn’t to say that my previous dancing lessons were better than my most recent one. In fact, my first dance lesson was a nightmare. In my first lesson, most of my dance partners couldn’t understand why someone who doesn’t know how to dance would attend a dance lesson. They’d constantly tell me that I have every single step entirely wrong, and then tell me what I’m supposed to do (in very confusing terminology), and whenever I changed my dancing they got even more annoyed! All this is despite the fact that I succeeded in my main goal of never stepping on anyone’s feet.
Prior to that lesson, I had no idea that dancing required such excessive precision! I constantly got chewed out for moving my feet a half inch too far, or a tenth of a second too soon. Was dancing made for people, or clock golems? They’d start talking to me vvveeeeerryyyy ssssloooowwly, and insist on doing the dance at 1/8 the speed of everyone else until I get it right.
Anyway, even though this whole darn entry is filled with complaints, I really am glad I went to the dancing club’s meeting, because I learned two very important things:
1) Every move has the same one-two-back-step rhythm that the basics have. This greatly simplifies things. Those clock golems’ ways have actually proved to be useful for something!
2) In actual dance classes, where you pay money to attend, they only teach you about two dance moves per day, which my little brain should be able to handle. Rather than, well, ten.
3) When the instructors tell you to turn right, they actually want you to turn left so your right shoulder is facing your partner’s right shoulder. They don’t see anything weird about this. All they see as weird is the guy who keeps turning right and crashing into his partner. It will be difficult to decipher all their thought processes.
And I guarantee I will go back to some other dance lesson at some point. Even though I will be the biggest idiot there. It is my nature. Any time that I haven’t recently been somewhere where I stand out as an idiot, is most likely a bad time for me.