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Dancing at the Highball

Sun, 4 Jan 2015, 12:50 AM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

1. 

We could see them from the sidewalk. They were expecting us, and their front door was open. But as it often is with us, we were running late. So as they waited for us with their front door open, they evidently found themselves with some time on their hands.

And so as we walked up the sidewalk to their house, we saw them through their open door. There they were, in their spacious, modern, open living room: dancing. And they twirled as we walked up the steps.

2. 

A few days later, we arranged to meet at The Highball. And as it often is with us, we were running late. So they grabbed a table by the dance floor and ordered some drinks.

After we got there, we sat around a while and talked. The place got busy. The band set up on the stage. Eventually Dale Watson came on stage, and the dance floor began to fill up. That’s what everyone was there to do.

Now, you must know that Gregg and Kelley are cut from difference dancing cloth than we are. They dance and twirl in their living room in plain view of walkers-by. They tour the area dance halls in search of the perfect waltz or two-step or polka. While we… well we plant our feet on the dance floor, stare into each others’ eyes, and begin counting out loud: slow, slow, quick-quick.

They are the dancers. We … aspire.

3.

So there we were … aspiring … on a dance floor full of people, working up a sweat, stepping on each other from time to time. There we were, when out of nowhere Gregg appeared. He motioned at us and nodded his head and pointed to his phone as he tried to get a picture of the two of us. 

Gregg is so tall that when he holds his camera up it has a remarkable bird’s eye view. And from that perspective at that moment, he captured the two of us looking up at the camera, captured in the middle of what is the closest that we can get to a twirl (which is frankly nothing remotely resembling one).

He texted us the photo. The next day, I traced outlines from it, sketched in some color, and tried to compensate for the motion in Trudy’s twirl. Trudy made suggestions on how to get her mouth drawn right (because frankly I had not done pulled it off on my own), and well … the result was not too shabby: a sketched rendition of Gregg’s bird’s eye view photograph.

But here’s the unfair thing: we aren’t the dancers; they are.

Next time, I need to take the picture. And although it certainly won’t have that same top-down perspective, with any luck it will capture one of their twirls, the kind you might see if you’re lucky enough to be walking by their house in the evening when they have their front door open.

© jumpingfish by David Hasan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License