Salsa Lesson Pt 1

Salsa dancing looks fun, doesn’t it? I’ve always thought so, and I always wanted to give it a try. I know some of you are thinking, “That is not my idea of a good time.” All right. Fine. You don’t want to try it. Have it your way. No one‘s making you, but I really wanted to. It’s high energy, rhythmic, and it just looked like something I could do, so I started casting around until I found a class.

When I called to register I was advised to bring a partner. That was not easily done, but I did eventually find someone to drag along. When the first day of class rolled around, I dressed in what I thought was the correct attire for that particular kind of dance having learned my lesson when I showed up for ballroom dance class dressed in shorts and tennis shoes. Everyone else in that class looked like they were dressed for a competition. I was not going to let that happen again, so you can imagine my shock when I walked into the class and saw everyone else clad in sweatpants and sneakers. I had blown it again. I had neglected to ask about the dress code, and I stuck out like a sore thumb. Who’d have guessed sloppy was the order of the day.

The reason for this soon became clear. We were in the large gymnasium of a recreation center adjacent to a local university, and all of the other participants looked to be young college girls. I quickly concluded that they must be doing this to earn some kind of extra credit for one of their courses because they all just stood around shifting their weight from one foot to the other and looking about as bored and unenthusiastic as was humanly possible. This was not at all what I was expecting, and it was about to get worse.

To be continued