You should hope I don't dance

"But you can't dance," exclaimed my wife after I made my announcement.

That one really hurt, because it was true. But the challenge was nearly more than I could resist. Nearly — but I could resist.

A little over a month ago I got a visit from a volunteer representing the Local Collaborative of mental health agencies (LC9). I later found that I had agreed to either be a celebrity dancer (or find one) for a fundraising event called Dancing With Our Stars.

Growing up in the Church of Christ in Portales in the early 1970s, dancing was something good teenagers avoided. We didn't get any dance time when we were little and consequently the only kids that danced worse than Church of Christ boys were Baptist girls.

Despite the taboo I somehow became somewhat comfortable dancing to rock 'n' roll at dances held at the old Memorial Building. Slow dances I avoided, that is until my senior year and Maypole. I must have learned to do a box step waltz for Maypole but you can't tell it now.

That made finding my replacement for this event important. As it turned out it was easier than I thought when my board president asked me at the end of a phone conversation if there was anything she could do to help me. The fish set the hook herself, I quickly threw her under the bus and she didn't realize she'd been railroaded until the train was leaving the station. (Wow, did I just use three clichés in one sentence?)

Of course I promised to support her in any way possible, which was attending the event.

The night of the dinner I was seated in approximately the same location in the Memorial Building where I had learned to dance dirty with Baptist girls so many decades ago. Knowing I wouldn't be dancing that night had put me at ease but the feeling was temporary.

A woman in a formal ball gown scurried across the dance floor in my direction and began to beg for a favor.

Would I dance with her during the opening number because she still needed a dance partner? I asked her if she was a Baptist and where she had been about the time I turned 16. I also asked her how she had singled me out.

She said the folks at the table across the way had told her I would be happy to help out. The person I had thrown under the bus smiled and waved from the table.

I agreed and warned her we might be more of a comedy act than a serious dance couple. She said just do a simple box step waltz and she'd take care of the comedy routine in the second round.

After I started on the wrong foot then closed the box up to a zombie shuffle, she assured me we didn't really have to waltz — we weren't waltzing. Somehow she got in one twirl before the music ended.

I went back to my seat and she danced the second round with a cardboard cutout of Frank Sinatra.

As far as I know her toes weren't broken during the event and I escaped with just a lightly bruised ego.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at: [email protected]