Not Exactly Swept Off Her Feet by Swing

It started with the shoes, spiffy black-and-white spectators that were way too expensive. I thought they were the hippest things on two feet until my daughter knocked the wind out of my funk with a raised eyebrow and the withering query, “Bowling? Are we taking up bowling, mom? Or maybe it’s golf?”

After meeting her teenage responsibility to dump her aging mother into the proper sartorial hole, even she had to admit the shoes were “the bomb.”

Now that I had them, there was nothing left to do but take up swing dancing. (OK, I admit it. Most of my leisure activities start--and invariably end--with the fashion trappings. “Love those boots! Hiking could be good.”)

With the look in place, all I needed was to learn a few moves and I’d be ready for the biweekly swing dances at the local rec center. So I signed up for a series of classes.

On the first evening, about 60 eager wannabe beboppers (a few sporting similarly expensive shoes) gathered at the center. In preteen cotillion fashion, the women were told to form a circle and the men then chose a partner. After each step, the men were told to rotate to the right, so over the course of the evening each person danced with several partners.

This was good for concentration, but tough on the body. One guy, who always smelled like raw onions, took seriously the rule that a leader should raise his arms high when navigating a follower through a turn. He was clearly oblivious to the fact that at 6 feet, 5 inches, he threatened to yank his partner’s arm out of its socket with each maneuver. During turns, small females were forced to leap into the air to avoid shoulder dislocation. Then there were the short guys who paid no attention to the high-arm rule at all and would clip you in the face when negotiating turns.

After a couple of weeks I gave up. But after reading Leo Smith’s Centerpiece story on the swing-dancing scene in Ventura on Page 44, I am considering giving it another try.

I’ve got the expensive shoes and they are the bomb.