Putting my best foot forward ("No, Amy...the other foot") for the Anniversary Dance

Sydney Lynn loves to dance. She envisioned her wedding as the perfect backdrop for spontaneous, synchronized, and perfectly choreographed dance numbers...a foot-stomping, skirt-swirling, two-stepping, deep-dipping good time. 

She forgot to factor in her family.

Dancing was not our forte.

Sydney kept making gentle suggestions and we outright refused to cooperate.

Sydney would have to get mean. Patrick-Swayze-bullying-Jennifer-Grey (forgetting that she was learning to dance to save his friend's job and reputation) mean.

"Mom, I'm sending you the link to A Bar Song. Learn Tipsy."

I watched the video. Okay. Simple enough.

I stood up to do it. Not okay. Speed-of-light fast.

I was going to have to bring out the big guns.

Erin.

Who, it turns out, was as mean...if not meaner than Sydney (and Patrick Swayze).

It's not like I want to be clumsy and inept. I wasn't faking my abhorrent lack of rhythm. I do not intentionally ALWAYS start on the wrong leg or step toward the opposite direction on purpose.

Erin thought that I was being deliberately obtuse. A dancing delinquent. "What are you rebelling against?" What-a ya got? The Rhumba? The Watusi? The YMCA? I can't do any of them.

Erin wrestled me in place. Gave every movement an idiotic (but memorable) name. Loudly chanted out the numbers one through eight and forced me to stomp like one of the Wicked Witch's palace guards.  She provided me with a video of herself expertly doing the movements and demanded that I practice for hours every day until I perfected that segment. Then we would move on to the next steps.

Let's just say that I never saw Erin again.

If that wasn't bad enough, Sydney had consulted my husband on the song choice to accompany the Anniversary Dance.

Allow me, for a moment, to harken back to my own wedding...lo, those many years ago. 

Led Zeppelin's "If the sun refused to shine."

Randy Travis's "I'm gonna love you forever."

Genesis's "Follow you, follow me."

We could have gone old school with my parents' song:  "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White" by Pat Boone.

But no.

Brad Mosiman chose "The San Antonio Stroll" by Tanya Tucker.

WHAT?!?

Can you guess the number of times I have heard that song in my life...let alone DANCED to it?

Yup.

ZERO.

So there we were.

In our drive-way.

Baby and Johnny.

And Baby was getting yelled at.

Ridiculed.

Blamed.

Ginger Rogers could float, effortlessly, backwards in her heels.

Amy Mosiman couldn't manage to stay upright, forwards, in her sneakers.

My quick-quick/sl-ow--sl-ow was more of a stumble-stumble/stomp-stomp (on Brad's feet).

"Maybe the two-step is not for us," Brad conceded after I'd plowed him over a dozen times. "Let's try a simple box-step."

Which is more like a triangle.

I robotically-romped around my driveway as Brad incorporated some innovative tap-dancing maneuvers to avoid getting crunched. 

"We're just going to have to do our best," Brad sighed.

So the day of Sydney's wedding arrived and I was shooting for my tried-and-true middle-school dance maneuver of the side-step/side-step/sway/sway. It was working pretty well until the DJ queued up "The San Antonio Stroll." The familiar throaty growl of Tanya Tucker had me fleeing for the hills with Brad, hot on my heels in pursuit.

Hand at my waist, providing his lifted elbow as a shelf for my arm, my husband spun me about the dance floor at a dizzying pace. We waltzed past the water station, wove around the wedding cake, bounced past the stunned bartenders before tackling the taco bar. Behind us...Lisa and Savannah matched us, step-for-step...with Douglas and Sydney brilliantly bringing up the rear of our dancing denouement.

As cinematic grande finales go, I'm not sure that we would make the highlights reel. I do think that our audience was floored by our ground-breaking (and back-aching) performance. With my newfound love of dancing, I embarked on some reflective thought and sole-searching. I still agree with Johnny that no one should put Baby in a corner. However, now I realize that the exception to that rule would be if we were square-dancing.