Trying Something New

Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind

/ jane in training / 4 Comments

Four score and twenty years ago, I asked a guy out on a date.  Well, it was more like: “Next time you’re in L.A., give me a call if you want to hang out.”  I know.  Being proactively vague is a gift.  We ended up being together for 18 years.

Needless to say, I haven’t been on a date with someone new in quite a while.  When I became newly single, I had no interest in dating – it wouldn’t have been a good idea until I found my own footing again.  But I’m ready now and…rusty.  Extremely rusty.  It doesn’t help that I didn’t date that much before my last relationship.

Yesterday, I asked Wine Guy:  “Would you be interested in meeting for coffee sometime?”  Wow, I get more skilled as the decades fly by.  Wait.  Now that I think about it, it probably would have made more sense if I had asked him to meet up over a glass of wine.  Anyways, he said yes, we exchanged numbers and…now what?  I didn’t lock down a day and time.  Was I supposed to do that?  Why is this so awkward?  I feel like I just went on a job interview after being out of the workforce for twenty years.  Hi!  Please hire me!

Clearly, I will be muddling through this whole dating thing until I get the hang of it.  Or not.  In the meantime, I respectfully and cautiously join the rest of the muddlers out there.  Here’s to us.

 

Shall We Dance?

/ jane in training / 4 Comments

I’m not sure what I was thinking.  That’s just it.  I wasn’t thinking.

After all, I’m still trying to understand the messages that my body sends me (see last entry).  Sometimes two halves don’t make up a whole, and sometimes the result isn’t as funny as the movie promises:

All_of_Me_1984

The local dance studio had advertised “Disco Night!” which included a lesson in the Hustle and then a dance party to follow.  I remembered how much fun it was to do the Hustle, and consequently, I thought it would be really fun to just let loose and dance afterwards.

What I didn’t expect was a formal lesson by award-winning ballroom dancers and as we learned each step, we would be switching partners.  I went by myself in an effort to “get myself out there” and found out, hey – this is what speed dating must be like!  Except, it turns out, this would be more humiliating.  On a positive note, I was having fun learning the first few set of steps before things got complicated with full and half turns.  On a not so positive note, if my guy also didn’t know how to dance and one of us missed a step, I got thrown off the ship and I took my partner with me.  If I tried to laugh it off and the guy didn’t laugh at all, I felt terrible.  Being responsible for my own demise was no big deal.  But if I ruined it for someone else…

When the lesson was finished, the lights went out and the disco ball came down. I thought, Let’s Dance!!!  Where’s Ren McCormack??!!  But people partnered up to elegantly chachacha and hustle and do whatever choreographed step they were doing.  Oh.

I watched the other single women being asked to dance and after fidgeting on the sidelines a bit, I left.  I felt…awkward.  I blame myself – I could have laughed it all off and not cared what anyone thought.  The point was to have fun, and my feelings of embarrassment kept me from truly having fun.

I guess the point of trying something new is that at least you learn what you like and don’t like.  After all, I don’t get the least bit embarrassed when I dance at weddings or other events where you can just let go and dance the way you want to.  In fact, I’m positive that I embarrass other people.  Maybe structured dance just isn’t my thing.

I was telling my mom about the experience and she said (translation provided in English), “When you were young, maybe 6 or 7 years old, you would put a record on and dance, dance, dance…dance, dance, dance…shake your booty, shake your booty…”  (Sorry, I made up that last part.  Couldn’t resist.)  She said that I would dance and dance and laugh and laugh…

That’s how a kid dances, right?  With complete freedom and joy?

That’s what all of me loves about dancing.  There is no argument within because I can let it all go and feel like a kid again.

No, I probably won’t be going back to that dance studio.  Not unless they combine speed dating with improvisational dance.  Now where to find…