No More Polkas Please!

Last night we had our Stake Valentine Dance. (Yes, a week after Valentines' Day, I noticed that too.)

This is something we look forward to every year. They usually have dinner and a floor show, but what we are really there for is the dancing. And watching everyone else dance.

It's amazing how many older couples are really good dancers. People just don't get all dressed up and go out dancing any more, like they used to. (I was actually quite surprised by how many women wore pants, which I hadn't seen before at one of these dances.) I keep telling Hal that we need to take lessons but he's been less than enthusiastic. He keeps saying we can do it when things get less busy (like that's really going to happen).

When we were younger, we had some friends, the Bridenstines and the Womacks, that we used to do things with on a regular basis. One night we decided to go dancing at the Elite Hall. It was fun, because Hal and I know a few basic swing-dance moves that we pull out on special occasions. At the end of the night, right as the last song ended, the saxophone player headed straight for Hal.

"What did you think you were doing?", he asked Hal. "You threw off my timing."

"What do you mean?", Hal responded.

"You threw off my timing.", he said with a very accusatory tone.

"What?", we asked.

"You threw off my timing. It's slow-slow-quick-quick, not slow-quick-slow-quick." (Or something like that. I've blocked it out somewhat because of what came next.)

He then grabbed me and proceeded to dance around the room. I do remember that he smelled really sweaty and it was not a pleasant experience. I was also pretty ticked off because any shred of self-confidence that Hal had in the dancing department pretty much went out the window for quite some time.

That is a true story. I kid you not. I wish I would have dared tell him off but I didn't. We should have told him his saxophone playing was throwing our dancing off.

Anyway, back to last night.

It's fun to see the couples that are around our age and their "moves". I told Hal that I can see why people like to drink at dances. I think I could probably do a lot better if I had a little alcohol in me. I'm very self-conscious and I have no rhythm as it is. But, it is fun and by the end of the night, you really don't care.

Hal's Second Counselor, Dan Bryan, and his wife Becky were at the dance. They are fun, we like them a lot. Becky reminds me a lot of a young version of my mom. I have to say, the girl can dance. When they announced a spotlight dance, she got right in the middle - by herself, and did a fine job.

My friend Kristi Forsberg was there helping, along with her husband Brian. It's fun to have a night with just adults to catch up with everyone and just visit without worrying what your kids are doing. I talked to Teresa and Shane Bertolio for quite a while and Kevin and Dorothy Womack, and we also sat with the Hugies and the Prices and Robert and Jennifer Saunders at dinner.

They had door prizes for people who remembered to bring their tickets and also people standing on the star with a certain number. We joked at our table about what the prizes would be. Hal said that the prize should be to get out of paying tithing for a couple of months. That went over pretty well. Most of the prizes were actually packages of Starburst and leftover food, like bags of rolls. The kids would have liked that. One of the prizes was actually a dance off between the two couples standing on the numbers that they called. Just not winning that made it worth not winning anything.

We had one incident that was not so pleasant and could have been a lot worse than it was. They started playing a polka, which I know how to do, so Hal and I started dancing and skipping around the room in circles, like you are supposed to during a polka. We had to stop once in a while because we got dizzy. We started off again, so proud of ourselves for doing so well when WHAM, next thing I knew, Hal was on the ground and then I tripped on him and fell too. He had accidently slammed into another enthusiastic polka participant, who fared better than we did, thankfully. I'm glad we weren't seriously hurt. At our age we could have broken a bone or something. My poor friend, Jeannie Smedley, saw the whole thing and she just looked sick about it until we assured her we were really fine. Her husband, Wes, only saw us on the ground, so he thought it was funny. I can't blame him. I'm sure it was pretty entertaining.

So that's pretty much the end of my aspirations to be a professional polka dancer.

All things considered, it was a pretty fun night.