Dancing with Beloved

Beloved and I were watching Dancing with the Stars the other night. I didn't actually mean to watch it, I just haven't yet gotten out of the habit of tuning in to CTV on Mondays at 8:00 to watch Corner Gas. It's not exactly groundbreaking, quality television, but there are worse ways to spend an hour than seeing that (relatively) famous people are almost as clumsy and awkward as I am. Almost.

Watching it reminded me that I don't think I've ever told you the story of the time Beloved and I took ballroom dancing lessons. I need to back up a little bit and explain to you that Beloved is a wonderful dancer. He's got a great sense of rhythm, and he's graceful. He loves to dance. Me, not so much. I like dancing in theory, don't mind going out and gyrating with the crowd to an uptempo beat, but I'm a bit stiff when it comes to actually dancing with someone, as opposed to simply dancing near them. Dancing near someone, it doesn't really matter if you flail madly and thrust randomly. Dancing with someone is a skill I've never acquired.

Anyway, I got it into my head that we (ahem, I) needed to take ballroom dancing lessons for our wedding. Now, if one were inclined to make an observation, one might note at this point that our wedding reception was a barbeque, a picnic in a park, and there was not a lot of dancing planned. None, in fact, save for the traditional 'first dance'. But that didn't really factor in to our my epiphany that we needed to take ballroom dancing lessons. And Beloved really is an agreeable sort of fellow. He was game for it, and so we signed up for lessons at our local community centre.

Now, I have to interrupt this story one more time for one more point of clarification. To truly appreciate this story, you have to understand the rather unique dynamics of the relationship between Beloved and me. He is, as I said, an agreeable sort of fellow, which is quite a perfect match for my inherent bossiness. I like to be in charge, he tolerates my enthusiastic if not occassionally misguided leadership. Most of the time.

So, ballroom dancing. We were on our third, maybe fourth lesson. We had covered the jive, and the tango, and a bit of salsa. We were working on the waltz, which is perhaps one of the most basic of all the ballroom dances. After 45 annoying and fruitless minutes of stepping on each others' toes, banging foreheads into chins, and general klutziness, Beloved finally threw down his arms in frustration.

"Do you want me to go into the bathroom and yank it off so you can wear it for a while, or is it MY turn to lead now?" he asked. There was no doubt in my mind what 'it' was.

Poor Beloved. It's not always easy being married to me. And I still couldn't waltz to save my soul.