There was never a time in my life when I had ever felt
comfortable getting up on a dance floor – not at school discos, not
at weddings, not even at my own wedding! Friends and family would
often try and persuade me, and even strangers would take pity and
try and coax me onto the dance floor. My reply was always the same,
“I can’t dance, and I don’t want to!” Some people were more
persistent than others, but everyone eventually gave up, usually
when a song comes on that they just have to dance to – something
that I’ve never got! The phrase “I can’t dance”, along with a
stubborn refusal to do so, has prevented many potentially
embarrassing situations, especially nowadays when the world and his
wife seem to have mobile phones capable of recording video, and
everything seems to end up on YouTube and the like.
I did have a friend who had a similar outlook on the whole
dancing thing which was fine until one day he got into a
confrontation with his father who, it turned out, had a rather old
fashioned outlook on life. “No son of mine is going to refuse a
pretty girl who has just asked you for a dance,” he exclaimed! No
amount of arguing was going to change his mind so, to prevent a
full-scale confrontation in front of a room-full of family and
friends, my friend gave in. The rest, as they say, is history, and
the resulting YouTube footage has had many thousands of hits! I was
nearly like him when, a few years ago, there was a particular
girlfriend who really had a hold on my heart and was also a keen
dancer (in fact this is how we met – at a mutual friend’s wedding
where I was sitting quietly enjoying a drink when she came over and
collapsed into a chair next to me after a particularly long session
on the dance floor – we got talking and things moved on from
there...). At events we subsequently attended she would do her best
to coax me onto the dance floor, and even though my “I can’t dance”
argument was always my first line of defence, she refused to
believe it, reasoning that I just didn’t want to – she just didn’t
get it, and after a few evenings like this we went our separate
ways. C’est la vie!
Please take care when re-hiding the cache, as it could easily
fall into view.
