Hudson Star-Observer Thursday, February 3, 2000
(reprinted with permission)
With Leadership comes responsibility
Randy's Ramblings
By Randy Hanson
Our dance class at the Y was due to start in 20
minutes when my beloved headed into the bathroom with a plunger in hand.
"Can't that wait until we
get back?" I asked.
The answer was a splash, a burst of sucking noises
and a flush.
"We need to drive separately.
I have to drop off my car downtown," she said, emerging from the bathroom.
She strode to the entryway and, reaching for her shoes, spied a crumb of
dirt on the floor. The next thing I knew she was sweeping the floor.
"What are you doing?" I
whined. "We're gonna to be late."
The whole swing dance thing had me nervous. I'm what you call dance
impaired. My parents thought dancing was sinful - and the way I do it probably
is a sin. I couldn't afford to miss any instruction.
With now just 10 minutes until dance time, I assumed
we were going to leave the car at the 16-year-old's place of employment
following the class. But as I crossed Interstate 94, I spotted my beloved
turning Onto the freeway in my rearview mirror.
She was headed downtown, I assumed, and followed.
Her car was nowhere to be found on Walnut Street and I remembered that
life is unpredictable.
My dance partner was waiting in the lobby when I
arrived at the Y. "Where did you go?" she asked.
I asked her the same thing.
"I always take the freeway
to town in the winter," she replied.
It was news to me.
Thankfully, dance instructor Steve O'Rourke was
still organizing the couples when we walked into the mirror-lined exercise
room on the second floor.
His first lesson made me a devotee of East Coast
Swing before I took my first rock step.
"What's the problem with
the way women dance?" he asked.
The men were dumbstruck, amazed that someone would
dare suggest in public that there's anything wrong with women,
Then, quietly, a few brave dancers mumbled in unison,
"They want to lead."
"That's right," O'Rourke
said, launching into a lecture on the chaos that ensues when women insist
on directing the steps.
Feeling empowered, I gave my beloved a knowing look.
I hoped she was making the connection between dancing and shuttling cars.
I quoted O'Rourke's speech frequently the rest of
the week. There were any number ofthings that would go
smoothly, I figured, if my soul mate wouldjust follow my lead. I had
dance fever.
The fever broke at the end of class the following
O'Rourke has students change partners every few
minutes to keep husbands and wives from blaming each other for their lack
of grace. But ifyou stay after class, you can practice your steps with
the person you came with.
My beloved and I did the basic turns with a measure
of ease and even got into and out of a cuddle, though more awkwardly. But
a move called the dishrag became a wrestling match.
I turned one way, she turned the other way, and
neither of us budged. We untangled our arms, talked about it, tried it
again and got the same result - standing back-to-back with our arms tied
above us. Our dishrag had a knot in it.
My beloved told me that I had turned the wrong way.
I told her that my class partners followed when I turned that way.
She suggested that we ask the teacher to help us sort things out.
"She won't follow," I told
O'Rourke, expecting sympathy after his stern lecture of the week before.
"Let's see," he said, extending
a hand to my beloved. He swept her through a basic loop turn, a reverse
loop, the cuddle with a spin out, the airplane, a slide and pass behind
with a double turn and the dish rag. They were Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse.
"She follows," O'Rourke
said matter-of-factly when the performance ended. I was turning the wrong
way.
That's when the other part of his earlier lecture
sunk in. When women lead, he said, it's usually because their partners
don't. Women are enthusiastic dancers, he said.
"It was fun to dance with
someone who knew what he was doing," my beloved told me on the way home.
With leadership comes responsibility.