Sure you can ballroom dance, but can you YMCA?

One of my very best girlfriends made the trek out to visit me this weekend. I was extremely determined to show her/myself a good time. This was partly due to the fact that, you know, I like her, but also due to the fact that she can travel back to our hometown and spread the word about how fabulous visiting me is to help me lure more friends here to entertain me.

Not that this little community is really lacking in things to entertain me, as we discovered when I convinced her it would be just the cat's pyjammas to attend a big band dance in one of the nearby villages.

We spent a giddy evening flouncing around my apartment, transforming into vintage, 1940s versions of ourselves and drinking frozen fruit cocktails in preparation for the big night. We then took a $23 cab ride to the tiny Town Hall, where we were greeted at the door by raised eyebrows and the hesitant question, "Oh, did you ladies want to come into the dance?"
It didn't take long to understand the man's surprise as it was echoed on every face as we walked into the room full of senior citizens. We might as well have actually been cats in pyjammas.

We quickly realized that we were seriously out of our league as far as dancing goes. I guess when you've been dancing with the same man for 60 years, you're bound to pick up some moves. So we decided the best course of action would be to bop along with the music from the safety of our table. It probably would have been bad form to knock over someone's grandpa with our flailing limbs.

However, the band aparently had other plans for us. The conductor announced that for their next number, they would need some help from "the two young ladies." That's right, no further description was needed. And so it was that we found ourselves accompanied by an 18-piece band, doing our very best impression of The Village People and leading a town hall full of seniors in doing the YMCA.

It was ridiculous. And hilarious. And just exactly the kind of thing I should know enough to expect by now.

In any case, we were the toast of the town hall. I think our willingness to look exceedingly foolish convinced the dancers that we came in peace. At their insistance, we spent the rest of the evening bumbling our way around the dance floor, laughing our heads off while trying to avoid steamrolling some of the frailer-looking dancers.

We also made friends with an adorable couple who were both about 5 feet tall. We had watched them tear up the dancefloor with some extremely smooth moves, laughing and smiling all over the place. So it was a bit of a shock to see the gentleman using a cane to walk back from the bar. "You saw him dancing away out there. He just pretends to need that thing so he doesn't have to carry my drink." His wife informed us. Once we stopped giggling, she admitted that "He actually has two false knees, but he just bandages them up, drinks his whisky, and away we go." If the grin he gave me -which didn't stop even when his false teeth fell out- once they were back on the floor was any indication, these might be words to live by.