The Undancing Machine
January 27, 2009
For someone who talks often about dancing every chance you get, I sure do go home and go to bed a lot.This past weekend was a good example. Conditions were perfect for dancing.
We were invited to a party that was waycooler than our usual Applebee’s date night. Our model friend was celebrating her 50th (even though she looks 30) birthday and is so euber-fab that she was featured in Oprah Magazine in a spread on women who give their age a good name. Her Dutch husband has a French accent, need I say more? There was a European contingent there that I could tell by the way they kissed both my cheeks, would be capable of staying up later than the time I get up in the morning. Plus the band was from THE city (and if you don’t know of which city I speak then you probably aren’t worthy either).
I had my first tickle of worry when I saw that it didn’t begin until 8pm, which is not too much earlier than the time when my body knows to start turning out lights and locking up doors.
But I rested up and I was still looking so forward to my night of dancing. I am such a sucker for the times when people go nuts on the dance floor and start crawling between each others legs and worming and basically progressively taking each funky move down a notch until we are all laughing too hard to qualify as still dancing. I love that.
And darned if, amidst all this grooviness, oh, around ten o’clock, darned if I didn’t feel my dance-energy-meter start to tick-tock a bit to the left. It was as if my dancing hem lost a stitch and the leg of my dancing pants was slowly unraveling the night ahead. I’d been unplugged from the dancing outlet and only had a few minutes of reserve dancing energy left! And the band was not even playing yet! So like the trooper that I thought I was, I went and ate half a tray of broccoli and assorted crudités and hummus and some popcorn to boot, hoping this burst of carbs would fuel me until at least the first song.
By 10:30 my belly was full, which unfortunately sometime acts as a precursor to sleep for me. And then big warning bells went off. I was tired of standing! Me, the Queen of Move! Move! Move, needed a chair.I just had to sit down, darn it.
Luckily my husband is a worse early bird than me so he always makes me feel perkier, with him yawning and looking at his watch and saying, “Huh?” when I talked to him. He is consistently, adoringly, more sleepy. Plus he never in his life voluntarily arrived on a dance floor unless someone was dragging him by a limb.
By this time, nearing eleven, when our 14 year old daughter called on my cell and unexpectedly needed a ride home, my husband and I nearly fell over each other in our rush to get to the coats from the coat rack. At the front door, we momentarily got wedged in the door frame like two of the Three Stooges,our haste to exit was that great.
What is wrong with us?
This surge of energy lasted until the car door closed and I was then overcome with a wash of disappointment in how boring we’ve (I’ve) become. I had a moment of comfort though, as our daughter hopped into our back seat and started spilling all the wonderful 14 year old minutae into the nighttime car-air and I realized this is where my mind now feels at home.
Then of course, the stripping of the pantyhose and climbing into bed, that is always nice. But that night, I expected more than nice from myself.
I suppose this is how people that I wrote about a few weeks ago-the “I Wish I Wanted to Exercise But I Just Don’t” people feel.
I know what Robert Browning meant when he said, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for.” We should all set our sights just a bit beyond what we think we can accomplish.
For me, I think this means that the next time, not that there’s going to be a next time since I wouldn’t blame anyone for not inviting us to their dance party, what with all my talk about the dancing! The dancing! Then not only do I not dance, I don’t even stay. I hereby resolve that I need to stay to dance ONE dance, even if it’s to the music in my head. God willing, if there is a next time, I will dance one dance.
Should I also mention that I did hear that this party really got cookin’ from midnight ‘til 2:30 which relieved me since there’s no way I’d have made it to midnight anyway, even if they served Starbucks. I was still glad to know that people didn’t immediately jump up on the tables and dance topless as soon as our car pulled away.
But I tri-gress (that means I triple digress).
So next lifetime, my promise to myself is, I can leave after one little dance. And any dancing fool knows that getting on the dance floor is the hardest part. After that, each song just keeps you magnetically fixed to the dance floor. Are you sensing any similarities here?
Those of you “WishIWantedToButDon’t” exercisers, promise yourself that youll do five minutes. And any person who’s ever even broken a sweat knows that, five dances, er, I mean five minutes is better than no minutes and more importantly once you get on the gym (or dance)floor it’s not so hard to stay for five more, then five more and so on.
So promise me you’ll do five minutes and I promise you I’ll stay for one dance and hopefully we can both wake up the next day feeling more accomplished and like we’ve reached something that we thought was beyond our grasp.
Now if I can just find a party that starts at 6pm so that the dancing gets going by 7:30 I will be all set. Hey! Anyone for dancing during the SuperBowl halftime show?
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