Not Much of a Dance Floor

Michael surprised me by suggested we take dance lessons when we were planning for our wedding. He thought that would help with his social anxiety about dancing in front of other people, and I thought it sounded fun. After we had been to several classes and knew enough to be dangerous, we acknowledged we would need to practice outside of our lessons if we were going to nail our first dance at the reception.

We had emailed our venue to ask about the size of the dance floor, and we wanted to try to practice in a space about that size so that we would know approximately how many steps or moves to make before we needed to turn. Our apartment is tiny, and even the basement of the building is choked with support beams, stairs, water heaters, and duct work. Not much of a dance floor.

We tried to think of other places we could go to practice, but we wanted to be able to do so semi-privately to avoid feeling awkward. And we knew if we had to go far, it would seem too inconvenient to be motivated. After some thought, we realized that the school at the end of our street has a large empty parking lot every evening, and the school is even slightly L-shaped to hide our dancing from any passerbys on the street. It seemed pretty perfect.

Half a dozen times, after dark, we’d walk down the street with our little Bluetooth speaker, a measuring tape, and four corner markers to make floor boundaries. Our song on repeat, we’d shuffle through the moves we’d learned, reminding each other of tips from our dance instructor and trying to remember not to look at our feet.

Once, an old man on a walk with his elderly dog wandered into the parking lot, and the dog excitedly hobbled right over to us, tongue lolling and tail wagging. “He likes your dancing!” The man told us.

Another night, we entered the parking lot to find a preteen practicing her skateboarding tricks, but she rolled out when she saw us approaching, clearly also desiring the privacy provided in this little nook of the neighborhood.

On one of our last practice sessions prior to the wedding, a young father with a large curly-haired dog and two daughters, both not more than five years old wandered through the parking lot, on their way to the somewhat secret cut-through in the hedgerow leading to the next street over. The girls both stopped in their tracks and stared at us, spellbound with mouths agape. We smiled and kept dancing, wanting to finish out the song.

When the music ended and we finished with the signature “dip”, the girls both broke into applause, huge smiles stretched across their glowing faces, giddy with excitement to have stumbled upon such a spectacle. The older girl turned around to whisper to her dad, and he smiled and said, “Ask them!" encouraging her to talk to us.

“Are you practicing for a performance?” She asked sweetly.

“Yes, we’re practicing for our wedding!” We told her.

The dad replied, “I remember doing that with my wife! Gosh, ages ago. It’s so cool you guys are out here doing this. Thanks for setting a great example for my girls. They should grow up thinking it’s normal to dance in parking lots.”