Shall We Dance?

I danced with my mother when I was a little girl. I danced on my father’s shoes. But I was nine years old before I danced with a boy – an experience that once made me cringe. The evening started fairy-tale-perfectly. I smoothed my pink satin dress, smiling at the serious-looking boys in ill-fitting suits across the gym. I pictured myself waltzing around the scuffed floor like Ginger Rogers, dipping gracefully beneath the basketball hoop. Not a whiff of dirty sneakers in the air. A chaperone shoved a red-faced Fred Astaire in my direction. I pressed my lips together hard to hide my grin. We plodded back and forth – one-two-three, one-two-three – and ended the dance exactly where we’d begun. As we stepped apart, I was floating on air. He looked like he’d been plucked from the jaws of death.

“Oh, thank you,” I said, ignorant of ancient, Emily Post dance etiquette.

Read the entire article in the  March 2004 issue