A common language: After a 40-year pause, he’s wobbling back out on the dance floor

In 1949 at Tulsa’s Clinton Junior High, I suspected some sinister force worked to keep girls and boys apart. During intramural games, for instance, girls were required to sit in bleachers on one side of the gym, with boys exiled to the other.

No wonder then that by 10th grade at nearby Webster High, the two genders rebounded from each other like basketballs on the court. We didn’t talk. We hardly dared glance at one another. That must be why the girls’ teacher finally asked the boys’ coach to march us over for a lesson in her gymnasium. It was a dance lesson. She taught us all, girls and boys, a little about the two-step.

“Now,” she gestured toward the feminine flock and told the boys, “just walk over and say, ‘May I have this dance?’” Then she fitted a strange little record onto a weird, brand-new 45 rpm player.

“Climb aboard a butterfly and take off on the breeze,” crooned Perry Como. “Let your worries flutter by and do the things you please…”

So we did the things we pleased. I learned girls wear perfume and smell nice. We began having great times then and later at junior and senior proms and USO dances in the Army and long after. It was on the dance floor that I courted Lenore, the girl who became my wife for 61 years, gone since 2017.

So at age 88 I am over all that, right? Indeed I was until 10 months ago, when I discovered that Nat, the 93-year-old guy who prances beside me at exercise class, goes ballroom dancing with his wife, June, at 1 p.m. every Friday. Just slap a $5 bill on a table at the Tea Dance in Meadowbrook Park Clubhouse, 9101 Nall. The five-piece band, Kansas City Swing, tunes up and melodiously sings out. The drummer, the flugelhorn guy and keyboardist often take turns vocalizing.

“Moon river, wider than a mile, I’m crossing you in style someday. Oh dream maker, you heart breaker…”

After 40 years without dancing, my high school muscle memory had withered. With my new pal, Patricia, I first practiced by wobbling with her around the scuffed oak floor of my living room to the music of, once again, a weird new gadget, this time the Amazon Echo Dot. Once again, I was happily reminded that females wear perfume and smell nice.

“Why do stars fall down from the sky, every time you walk by?” warbles my Echo Dot. “Just like me, they long to be close to you…”

We showed up at the Tea Dance and again took up our clumsy wobble. But soon, with my right hand at Pat’s waist and her left cupping my shoulder, we began to dance. Really dance, swinging around the floor, weaving among all those other swingers.

It’s interesting that in modern America dance is one pastime in which the man can lead without offense. Should that continue? Anyhow, if you don’t lead them into collisions, ladies seldom grumble. Usually Pat’s firm grip on my shoulder steers me out of those.

She is the better dancer but can get breathless, so I sometimes shop around a little among women singles who show up. Once, to my sorrow, I chose a former dance instructor, who insisted on teaching me the polka. Whew! It also goes the other way as, when my back was turned, a vigorous single man tapped Pat on the shoulder and waltzed off with her.

“I love all the many charms about you. Above all, I want my arms about you…”

Among strangers, where does that happen, and respectably, except on the dance floor? I should not fail to mention the free coffee and treats participants bring, cookies, now and then a cake, and twice even a harvest of cucumbers from a dancer’s garden.

For the final number at the session, Kansas City Swing often plays “September Song,” about the dwindling days of that month, and the year, and more.

“When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame, one hasn’t got time for the waiting game...”

So yes, I suppose that’s why we’re not waiting. That’s why we’re dancing.

Contact the columnist at hammerc12@gmail.com.