IN THE SWING

So the night I hosted book club, my husband Tom went out with his buddy John to hear some jazz.  Turns out the "jazz night" wasn't what they expected.  

That Tom and John found each other is one of those things that happen in the universe - they are both attorneys, musicians, and  funny guys.  They bring out the silly in each other. Tom tried to turn John into a bike rider but John fell off his bike rolling along in a residential neighborhood and broke his hip - so they don't do sports together any more except for going to the local theater to watch football on the big screen and drink beer.

Back to the jazz night.  Turns out that the other attendees of jazz night were a lot of women of a certain age who made it very clear that they were there to dance.  I questioned the dance -ability of jazz but that is not part of the story.  Tom and John spent the evening having cocktails and coming up with a plan to buy "shiny clothing", learning to dance and then going out and offering their dancing services to these women.  When I pointed out that Tom has danced maybe 3 times since our wedding 29 years ago, he shrugged.  Really, it was all about the outfits.  Whether they should do sequins and epaulets and maybe embroider their names on jackets...like I said.  Silly men.

Of course, when I explained that women do tend to love to dance and that a man who could really dance was a rare and magical creature,  I guess I got Tom's attention because a week or so later we went out for an introductory West Coast Swing dance lesson.  Now we are taking lessons every Monday night.

Each woman I have told about this interesting development says their husband would never voluntarily take dance lessons.  I would have said the same thing.  Something has happened in this second year of our empty nest.  My husband has been so much more focused on the quality of our time together, more interested in developing our social life and expanding our activities.

On the way home from our second dance lesson we had a great time talking about all the other couples in the class and how they danced and partnered (they make you change partners every few minutes so we dance with all the other members of the class!) We will never be that couple who gets into the dance thing and travels around doing competitions, but we can already see that  it is a great activity and opportunity to meet some new people - which is harder and harder to do after the kids are grown.

Plus dancing clothes!