Do you know about Geek dancing? (No, thats not a mistake in spelling. Not Greek but GEEK dancing.) Actually geek is in the dictionary. It refers to a carnival performer whose act consists of doing weird things. Biting the head off a live chicken, for example. In current slang, a geek is someone who looks like he might be capable doing something like that. A person who bears watching. I hear young people using the word to describe anybody who is older and independent in lifestyle. There is a kind of compliment implied. It means youre a little strange, but interesting.

I guess its true. A lot of us older types are a bit geeky. At some point your genetic code presses a switch in your head. You look in your closet to dress for the day and you say to yourself, who cares? You reach a point somewhere around sixty when you decide to just go ahead and weird out. You start out the door in your house slippers, headed for the grocery store, and you dont go back and change into shoes. To hell with it. Or you go out to the mailbox in your bathrobeyour oldest, sleaziest, comfiest bathrobeand dont give a damn who sees you. Or when someone rings the doorbell, you dont check in the mirror to see how you look. You just open the door. Its their problem, whoever they are. So you arent color-coordinated anymore. So? So you dont make your bed every day. So? Your life becomes like your old carjust as long as it runs and gets you there, who cares how it looks? Some people call this going to seed. Others call it the beginning of wisdom. Take your pick.

But I was going to talk about geek dancing.

When I get down and my life is logjammed and I need some affirmative action, I go where people dance. I dont mean joints where people go to get crocked and then wobble around the dance floor to music. I mean places where people who really like to dance go to do that. I like dancers. Never met a serious dancer who wasnt a pretty fine human being. And I enjoy the never-ending pleasure of being surprised by just who dancers are. It does me good to see a couple of ill-builtskind of fat and homely and solemn and allget up on the floor and waltz like angels. When I see people like that on the street and start to look down my nose at them, a better voice in my head says probably dancers and I feel better about them. And me.

Anyhow. About geek dancing.

My favorite place, the Owl Tavern, has traditional jazz on Sunday nights from 6:30 to 9:30. The geek band plays swing music from Chicago and New Orleans from the good old days. Most of the people who show up are over forty, blue-collar one-beer types who have to be at work on Monday at 7:30. Not what youd call a rowdy crowd. Dancers is what youd call them.

I like to look around and find the king-hill champion geek for the evening. An old guy wearing invisible house slippers and his bathrobe. Balding, white hair, short, wrinkled. The kind who sort of lists to port when he walks. One who you might think was strictly nursing-home material if you saw him at a bus stop. But you see him here. And you know. A dancer. A dancing geek.

And he usually has his wife, the geekess, with him. A bit younger, always fluffed up a bit for dancing and has been for fifty years. Check her shoes. If they are black with mid-heels and a strap across the instep, its a sure bet what she came for and what she is going to do.

The music cranks up, he takes her by the hand and kind of limps onto the floor. Its an act, just to set you up. And then it happens. She steps into a permanent spot formed by his embrace, the years fall away and once again Cinderella and the Prince move to the music in the room and the music in their hearts. It takes about forty years to dance with a partner this way. Such ease, such grace, with all kinds of little moves that have been perfected without words. He dances flatfooted and with an economy of motion. She responds to unseen suggestions to twirl out and around and back. Their eyes meet from time to time, and you know that youre seeing a pretty happy marriage there on the floor. Youd have to love someone a long time to do what theyre doing.

Sometimes the old geek asks another lady to dance. And somebody usually asks the geekess. They make whoever they are dancing with look pretty good. And feel pretty nice, too, I bet. An eighty-one-year-old geekess once asked me to dance on such an evening. I gave her my best, and she stayed right with me. You are real good, honey, she said as I escorted her to her seat. I lived off that compliment for a week.

I want to be, and I fully intend to be, an old geek dancer. And my geekess and I are working on our dance routine. I realize that is a public responsibility: to help everybody stay as young as long as they can. To set good examples. And I dont want to die quietly in my bed eitherbut at the end of the last dance some lovely night, sit down in a chair, smile and pass on.

All this reminds me of something I heard about the Hopi Indians. They dont think there is much difference between praying and dancingthat both are necessary for a long life. The Hopis should know, I guess, as they have been through a lot and are still around. They say that to be a useful Hopi is to be one who has a quiet heart and takes part in all the dances.

Yes.

----Robert Fulghum

(Posters Note: My husband of fifteen years is now an ex because he didnt dance.)

-- Debra (ILive@IDance.com), July 09, 2000

Answers

what a great-post!!be-happy-don,t worry!! every-sunrise--is wow -time!

-- al-d. (dogs@zianet.com), July 09, 2000.

I just got finished watching Showgirls, so count me in on the dancing in Las Vegas!

-- Dance Fan (df@it.looks.like.fun), July 09, 2000.

Why watch television when you can mambo? It's true co-ed contact sport. Love it, love it. Mmmmmmmmmm.

-- Woweeee (ohhhh.myyyy@look.at.that), July 09, 2000.

Debra/Robert Fulghum, Those were beautiful words. Dancing and laughter, and Love Ye, One Another, were the words we were instructed. I don't even like my neighbor, much less the stupid fellow driver, then tolerence comes into play.

-- Love, Love (one@nother.com), July 09, 2000.