DANCIN’ FOOL: One thing I could never figure out – I guess it’s just me – is why people like to dance so much. Dancing is one thing that my mind just wasn’t wired for. I could never figure out how to move my body in a graceful fashion. Whenever I did try to dance, I looked like Rip Van Winkle or Ichabod Crane or one of those other lanky, mythical old guys who lived somewhere in the hills near the Hudson River, up past Bear Mountain (maybe also something like Jim Carrey’s rendition of Lemony Snicket). My own bodily interpretations of music just aren’t like most people’s. They’re rather ugly (more like boppin’ up and down to the beat). I once took dance lessons, and that made it less ugly. But it still wasn’t any fun; I wanted to bop up and down, and they made me shuffle from side to side. So for the most part I’ve stayed off the dance floor (and have regretted the handful of times when I violated that rule).

Obviously, I can’t relate to metaphors about life being a dance. Perhaps it all relates to my Myers-Briggs temperament. I’m a mongrel mix of INFJ and INTJ. The N, T and J elements combine to keep my mind from grasping the feel of dancing, and the “I” element keeps me from any great craving to dance with someone else.

For the most part, I’ve had a full life. I’ve experienced in some way most of the good things that life and society have to offer. But dancing is the one aspect of human experience that I just never connected with. I honestly think it was biological destiny; people who are good dancers just take to dancing like ducks take to water. I just don’t have those genes. And I don’t regret that; dancing dosen’t even look like fun to me, and romantic dancing just looks like a vehicle for sexual frustration more than anything else. If people like me ran the planet, one thing’s for sure. There wouldn’t be much dancin’ going on. Other than some boppin’ up and down in the street, now and then . . . .