Clumsy or not, it’s time to revisit square dancing

 

If one combined the traits of ham-fistedness with clumsiness, you might come up with something like Kubrick’s ape in «2001.» Unable to stand upright, throwing his arms around, just getting used to the grip. Maybe that›s more heavy-handed. Maybe a better image is a bear at the trashcan.

Not that I’m hairy, or apish, or dumb necessarily (my brother says I’m “considerably less dumb” than I “look”). Just that I take up a lot of space for a little guy; I’m not cognizant of my complete surroundings; I get dizzy. I bump and stumble. And if I do become clumsy, I get frustrated, and then I get heavy-handed.

To paraphrase Jerome David, I’m a terrific clod. I call myself “a sensitive bull in a China shop.” Meaning there’s always emotions tied to my oafishness. Guilt if I step on Foxy’s toes – she squeals. Anger at myself when I break something like a fishing rod – I break fly rods when I get flies and line hung up in trees, and rod tips smashed in the door. Sadness when I step on a tulip sprouting or a wild iris.

My hands shake. I’ve been shaking for many years. When I was drinking heavily, I would shake from the drinking, from the coming down, that is, when I didn’t have high enough blood alcohol. Also, I’ve always taken medications. The combination affects you. Now I still take the medication.

I think that things are even worse now. Maybe I’m getting old. Too bad, because I’ve developed so many hobbies that demand very precise work. Planting tiny seeds like lettuce and beets and poppies, planting delicate potted plants like violas and tomatoes, working with rose and willow cuttings, tying mayflies and caddisflies, painting portraits of ducks, painting mallard and ringneck decoys.

We had a girl back in eighth grade, one of the popular girls. Smart and sporty and short (which I’ve always liked in women). With poofy blonde hair. She was one of those girls that was in some other league, an upper echelon of girls. Her name was Nancy. Great name. We were near each other alphabetically by last name, so in gym class I’d be paired up with her sometimes. Other times I was paired with a wild girl (which I’ve also always liked) named Dawn, another great name, who was on the other side of me alphabetically by last name. So, I was straddled between these two for paired sports like tennis and handball and squash and racquetball. And I was lucky that way. Or those two were lucky, because me and the one or other of them always won in those doubles’ games.

Then, in the two-week rotation of phy-ed, we get the two weeks in one half of the big gym for square dancing. Which everyone hated. I think there was an evangelical or two that got to sit it out. I think my buddy Dave might’ve gotten a doctor’s note to sit it out. He was forever overweight and had a bad back already. He participated in all the other gym stuff, though. Huh.

So you learn all the calls – bow and curtsy or whatever, and swing and do-si-do and allemande and promenade, and holding hands was a new sensation for me, and then I found myself partnered with Nancy, and – the strange thing – this popular, cute girl with whom the boys either got show-offy (suck ups) or bashful (me), either sweet-talked her or averted their eyes (me) – and I took her hands and they were like 80-grit sandpaper. That was so strange. That did not compute. It was a life lesson for someone smarter than me.

Now I can say that my hands are nothing to write home about. One index finger broken twice (first during football, then with a nailgun). A pin (and a scar) in my wrist. Disfigured knuckles from practicing the left jab and right cross on the heavy bag with only wool gloves, not sparring gloves. Like Rocky Graziano hitting a cinder-block wall to strengthen his fists.

I didn’t like square dancing way back then. As a young knucklehead it became easier and funner and more natural to enter the mosh pit and slam dance. And now as a knucklehead still I take up the squared dance when I am old.

I applied hand moisturizer for the first time in a decade. Maybe I’ll shave… and use some aftershave. Maybe apply some delicate cologne some night.