Avoiding Dancing

AT THE SENIOR CENTER, an attractive lady asked me to dance. She had a few years on her facially, like we all do, but a hot bod. Ben Franklin's kind of girl; older,, and as he reminds us in his famous essay on the virtues of older women, they age from the top down, and, as the old saying goes, they don't yell, they don't tell, and they're grateful as hell. I was afraid to dance with her. I knew she wouldn't ask me twice. I can't dance, and I don't like the kind of music we have at the center; hillbilly country, fiddle included. So I engaged her in conversation, briefly. She began by mentioning that she had recently taken up dancing, that she found it to be good exercise, and therapeutic to boot. I just had to turn it intellectual. I asked her opinion as to the greatest dancers of all time. I gave her my list. Among the men, I named Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Michael Jackson, and Prince. I offered ginger Rogers, Lisa Minnelli, Judy garland and Shirley MacLaine for the ladies, and left it at that. I would have started to name ballet dancers, but decided they didn't count. The attractive lady looked nonplussed. I waited, for her to speak. When she did, I was disappointed. She said she had never really thought about it much, that she was really more interested in actually dancing than naming dancers, and that, well, she really didn't spend much time studying on it. the truth was obvious; she had never heard of any of these people. and that, in itself, was just about enough to scare me off. My standards are not particularly high, but I have them. A friend once told me that he would never date a woman unless she could name the Vice President of the Untied States, and to me, that seems reasonable, and not not really too much to expect. if you've never heard of Fred Astaire, or Prince, don't bother to ask me to dance. I'm already looking for an excuse not to.