Is it just me, or do all people love to give advice, even when it’s not particularly wanted? And for me at least, the problem seems to have gotten much worse as the years have gone by. I think maybe it has something to do with the fact that all my kids are now old enough to completely ignore me when I want to offer them my opinion about something. So, I have had to start going in search of complete strangers to get my “giving out unwanted advice” fix, which brings me to my little story.
I was recently on the golf course when a young man in his late-20s started talking to his friend (they were in my foursome) and I overheard him say, “I haven’t been out on a real date in ages. I’m starting to think there’s something seriously wrong with me.”
“Can you dance?” I blurted out in his direction.
“What?” he asked, obviously not sure if he had heard me correctly.
“Can you dance?” I asked again, this time a little louder.
He smiled at me and said, “No, not even a little!”
“Well,” I said, “then there’s your problem.”
“Really?” he asked, still smiling.
“Have you ever seen a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ movie?”
“Not really,” he answered, looking at me very strangely, “but I think I know who you’re talking about. Wasn’t he that old guy who used to always wear a top hat and tuxedo?”
“That’s Fred Astaire alright. Do you remember anything else about him?”
“Not really.”
“Well,” I said, “the most remarkable thing about Fred Astaire was that he was butt-ugly, and he couldn’t have weighed more than 130 pounds soaking wet. Plus, he was short and had to wear a hairpiece because he was almost completely bald.”
“And your point is?” asked the young man, smiling again.
“My point is that butt-ugly Fred Astaire was always floating over dance floors with beautiful Ginger Rogers and lots of other gorgeous women in his arms. In other words, if you want to have pretty girls hanging all over you, just learn how to dance! I’m telling you, there’s nothing a woman likes more than a man who knows how to dance!”
“Really?” asked the young man, suddenly interested in what I had to say. “But even if I could dance, I don’t know any places to actually go and do it.”
“Hey,” chimed in his friend, ”I know some pretty cool clubs where people still dance.” And as the two of them were discussing the subject in more detail, I found my mind drifting all the way back to the long-ago days when I first learned how to dance.
I was about 14 years old (maybe 13) when my twin sister suggested to my parents that we have a garage dance. The idea somehow caught on and before long all of our friends for blocks around were hosting dances in their colorfully decorated garages, too. They were very simple affairs, with parents for chaperones, cake to eat and punch to drink, and Ricky Nelson and Elvis Presley records for dancing. At the time, I wasn’t really into girls, and actually dancing with one of them was something I was hoping to put off for as many years as humanly possible. My idyllic life more or less revolved around the sport of baseball, and if I wasn’t playing it at the local school with my friends, I was watching it on TV or desperately trying to obtain the autographs and bubble gum cards of all the San Francisco Giants. And during baseball season, I always went to bed listening on my little transistor radio to the Sacramento Solons games.
Anyway, my sister noticed all this, convinced my mother that I was shamefully lacking in all the social graces, and the garage dances were seen as a good way for me to begin correcting the problem. So, learn to dance I somehow did, and it turned out to be a lot more fun than I had ever imagined once I found myself in the arms of some of my sister’s very cute girlfriends. Not only did they smell a lot better than most of the guys I was always hanging out with, but with a pretty girl in my arms and a great old slow song like Smoke Gets in Your Eyes playing in the background, I was pretty much sure I had died and gone to heaven.
“Okay,” my young golfing partner suddenly said to me, “I think I just may give this dancing thing a try. I mean, how hard can it be to learn how to shuffle my feet around a little bit on a dance floor? Thanks for the advice!”
“Believe me,” I said, “you’ll never regret learning how to dance. But don’t forget, if you really want to score some points, take your date out to dinner first – then dancing.”
“How come?”
“Because nothing puts a woman in a good mood faster than not having to cook. And when she hears she’s going dancing, too, that means she gets to wear some of her very best clothes and shoes, listen to really good live music, and pretend she’s Ginger Rogers for a few hours. And don’t worry if you’re not the greatest dancer in the world right away, because you’re already way ahead of the game.”
“How so?” he asked.
“Because you’re not as butt-ugly as Fred Astaire.”