Tony Woodlief | Author

Dance For Your Life

The thing is, I lied about being able to dance when I was courting my wife. How often do people dance any more? Sure, people put on some kind of godawful thumping tribal ritual-sacrifice music and grind up against each other, but that’s not dancing. Nobody dances any more, right?

Until there’s a dance, to which you are invited, and where you are expected to, well, dance. So I wrote a couple of essays about learning to dance. Here’s an excerpt from the first:

“We are learning a country-western waltz. This is distinctly different from a Viennese waltz. I didn’t grow up in the West, I’ve never been to Vienna, and my only dance lessons were when my grandmother would toss back an extra snort of Blue Nun, stoop to clasp me cheek-to-cheek, and dance a tango in the living room.”

And here’s an excerpt from the follow-up essay, about our big night:

“We fly across the country and drive hours to a community where people leave the keys in their pickup trucks. I throw my scarce talents into helping prep the barn, and Maggie disappears with the rest of the bridesmaids. We see each other just a little over the next day and a half, and then the wedding is upon us. The groomsmen are all lean cowboys in black hats. They are ranchers and rodeo riders.

A lesser man might feel insecure.”

You can read them both starting here.

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