Dancing to the copier

When I was younger, I was much more likely to spend my time making music than dancing to it. Add to that an unfortunate (and harmless, except that it crushed me) remark by one of my parents about how tall, gawky young guys looked so funny when dancing, and you have a guy who studiously avoids tripping the light, fantastic or not. Even at my own wedding, Mary and I had to pose in a “dancing-like” position so the photographer would feel he’d gotten his money shot and would shut the hell up and let me enjoy our party.

So anyway, the fact is I never learned to dance. No charm school, no Arthur Murray, no practicing in the mirror – ew, ESPECiALLY not in the mirror, sheesh!  – and absolutely never, ever danced with a girl, not even a little bit, not even for a minute.

Now, some of you who knew me back when are going to claim that I’ve forgotten all the shows I was in when I was young and shameless. But then I would have you consider whether Cornelius Hackl or Ezra Reber or Caiaphas or any of the other characters I played ever did anything that actually resembled dance. Nay, I say. No ballet, no tap, nor soft-shoe nor even clog. No pirouettes, whirls, twirls, flits, frolics, leaps or jetes for this boy, no soirée! Neither a Kelly nor a Baryshnikov shall I be.

In high school, I was impressed, even enthralled watching Jerry and Val and Cecille et al. I was amazed at how they moved so seemingly effortlessly and I wished like hell that I could move a tenth as well as any of them. For myself, I did the minimum amount of somewhat rhythmic shuffling to get through the shows I was in and that. Was. It!

Now, I do admit to the occasional insane flurry of disjointed flailing that I’ve been known to do when I thought I could get a laugh out of Daughters One and also Two. Or better yet, when I could horrify them.  That’s the best. But it’s not really dancing and no one will ever see me do the actual dancing deed.

Here’s the problem – I can’t help moving rhythmically in response to, you know, rhythm. I played drums for eleven or twelve years as a kid and The Beat is engrained in my soul. Can’t help it.

So how does one avoid the near occasion of gyration? Well, I never watched Bandstand and I avoided high school dances and I’ve never hung in bars with any wide empty floor spaces.

Still, there’s that rhythm thing. And the copier / printer I use most often at work creates a really danceable (I give it a nine, Dick!) percussive rhythm when you make more than about three copies. And as a curriculum developer and frequent teacher, I spend a fair amount of time in close proximity to this machine just when it’s doing its shiggity-diggity thing.

It gets me every time. I stand there positively shivering as I try me hardest not to start moving in response to this damned office machine. Of course, I can’t give in to these urges because someone might actually, you know, see me. And as a humanitarian, I just couldn’t do that to the people with whom I have to work the next day.

No Ricoh Rhumba for this boy! (And a sigh of contentment was heard throughout the land.)

Okay, it’s actually more of a samba, if the truth be told.