Shall We Dance?

Thought for the day: Dance like no one is watching, love like you'll never be hurt; sing like no one is listening, and live like it's heaven on earth. [William Purkey]

[image courtesy of unsplash]

I've never been all that great of a dancer. Not that I didn't love doing it... but let's just say no one ever tried to recruit me for a touring dance troupe. For the most part, what I lacked in talent, I made up for with enthusiasm. I did manage to take first place in a jitterbug contest a million years ago, but I attribute that entirely to my dance partner. Bobby reeeeeally knew how to lead.

And about forty years ago, believe it or not, I actually took belly dancing lessons. It was a lot of fun, but it was more of an exercise class than a genuine dance class. The instructor lured some of us into continuing with her "advanced" class by promising we'd make costumes and perform at a local nursing home. We did neither, which, in retrospect is probably a good thing. Not the costumes part. The part that would've had a handful of silly housewives jiggling and wiggling in front of a bunch of captive seniors.

In more than fifty years of marriage, Smarticus and I have done a lot of dancing. We even belonged to a club for a few years that gave us lots of opportunities to dance. But it's been a while. I still sway and clap or snap my fingers to the background music that's playing while we shoot pool, but I suppose my days of getting out on a dance floor may be near an end. (Maybe at one of our grandchildren's weddings...?)

But wouldn't it be nice... I mean, really really nice... if we could all dance with the reckless abandon of a child? To simply bubble over with the infectious feel of the music and the explosive joy of moving...  without a single shred of self-consciousness? Without the self-doubts that tell us I don't know how.

Why can't we? What's stopping us? I say... nothing is stopping us ... but us.  I say forget about that dance like nobody's watching stuff. I say dance like a child. They don't even need music.

Matter of fact, I think I'm gonna go dance around our bedroom.(AFTER I take a couple of Aleve...)  Pretend I know what I'm doing. Why the heck not? Nobody will be watching but the cats. And they might even join in.  And, hmmm, if I'm not mistaken, I may still have some belly dancing music around here... THAT should be a REAL hoot! I may even scare up one captive senior who might appreciate it...

Talking about dancing with reckless abandon, I'm gonna share a portion of  one of my early... way early... blog posts, back when I only had a handful of followers:

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Do you remember Shirley Temple?

She was an amazing child star, and the absolute epitome of golly-gee-whiz cuteness, with her bouncy blonde curls, chubby cheeks and deep dimples. In the '50s, after she was already a grown woman, my friends and I were still watching her old movies, still watching her sing and tap dance across our tiny TV sets. Most of my friends hated her, but me? I wanted to BE her.

How I longed for my limp straight-as-a-stick hair to magically turn into those bouncy sausage curls. How I longed to sing those sweet songs as sweetly as she. And, oh! How I longed to tap dance!

In reality, my hair was worn in one of two styles, and I use the term loosely. Either it was straight and looked like Prince Valiant's do, which can be approximated by sticking a mixing bowl on your head and cutting around it, or it was tortured into a Little Orphan Annie frizz by virtue of a smelly home permanent. No sausage curls for me, bouncy or otherwise.

The singing I did okay. Never American Idol quality, but I could carry a tune. But dance? I could make my way around the neighborhood by walking strictly on top of the chain link fences, could climb the tallest trees, and could ride my bicycle down the multi-flights of concrete stairs by the elementary school without quite killing myself, but let's just say that I was never the most graceful kid on the block. I had two over-sized left feet, and my favorite aunt called me Lurch.

But one magical day, during one of our huge extended family gatherings, I made an amazing discovery in the shadows behind my uncle's cellar steps... my older cousin's long-forgotten and bee-yoo-ti-ful sparkly red tap shoes!

[image courtesy of morguefile]

                   

Believe you me, it took quite a while to squeeze into those tiny shoes. But I did it, and then in the shadows behind the cellar steps, I began to dance. Not sure it would've qualified as anything close to tap dancing, though. It was more like a Snoopy happy dance. If Snoopy had his feet shoved into shoes that were two sizes too small. Then, of course, I had to sing...  On the Good Ship Lollipop.

[image courtesy of unsplash]

I was having a grand ol' pinch-toed time until some of my relatives found me. And laughed. Laughed until they almost wet themselves. (Did I happen to mention that my relatives were terribly rude?) Nah, it was all in fun, and once my mother helped pry my poor feet out of those shoes, the family continued to tease me about that adventure for many years to come.

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Even after all these years, I still remember how happy it made me to find those shoes and to dance with the sheer joy of dancing. We should all try to do that more often, don't you think?

Dance and sing to your music. Embrace your blessings. Make today worth remembering. [Steve Maraboli]

It's no secret that some dark health clouds have been hanging over our house for a while, but I think that's an even bigger reason to dance. To sing. To laugh. None of us get to live forever, so we've absolutely got to make the most of each day.

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning how to dance in the rain.

How about you? Who did YOU want to be when you were a kid? Besides Shirley Temple, I also wanted to be Dale Evans. That didn't work out so hot, either. I remember going horseback riding one time, and carrying a nice apple to feed my horse. Poor ol' thing didn't have a tooth in her head. Not positive, but I'm pretty sure Dale Evans' Buttercup had teeth.

                           Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

[image courtesy of unsplash]

                                            Embrace life. This may be the only one we get.