Building Your Ideal Life

This thought hit me tonight as I sit at the computer and push things forward on my businesses.

Dancing. Dancing is good. I met my wife dancing at a country-western club. In fact, she was standing in a group of girls and guys and 1 guy in particular was talking her ears off. That's where I came in. I was living in Nashville, Tennessee at the time and had been on my feet all day speaking. The last thing I wanted to do after driving 5 hours to visit family in Indianapolis was go out and dance. However, my youngest sister wouldn't have any part of that and she dragged me out.

So the club my sister takes me to, she takes off to talk to some friends and here I am standing alone - not dancing. Nobody cool dances alone - and sorry, but line dancing counts as dancing alone. As I scanned the room, I saw Julie and this bloke talking. As I continued to nurse my beer, I realized this guy was not asking her to dance so I did what any guy would do - at least what any guy would want to do - I went up in the middle of her crowd and asked her to dance right in front of the guy doing research on how not to win a girl.

Jul will say it was all over when we embraced and I swept her down the dance floor. I will tell you it was when I walked up with bravado and pulled her away. Either way, it worked and here we are 11 years later.

But I'm not writing to tell you about how I met my wife. It's about dancing and the power of dancing.

As I am listing to my Napster 'oldies' playlist, a song pops up. It reminds me of my Uncle Dave every time I hear it. My mother's family was always knee-deep in music - playing, singing, dancing. We all have, well, rhythm - Motown-style rhythm. The song was a Motown classic by the Supremes - 'Someday We'll Be Together'. It just has a catchy little Motown beat that make you (me anyway) want to bite your lower lip and 'shake what your mamma gave you'. Go ahead and try it - I am. Don't worry if people laugh. That's what dancing is all about - being comfortable in your own goofy skin.

The reason that song reminds me of my Uncle Dave is that, on his West Virginia farm stood an old 2-room log cabin. I remember it more often than not, being piled high with my great-grandmothers belongings, saddles and everything else that didn't have a place in the trailer/house/barn. I remember escaping to that cabin on several occasions, digging through all of the boxes and spider webs to find the old record player and a box of 45s.

On a couple of occasions, I remember a cleaner cabin and we would all go in an dance to a stack of 45s with those clever little yellow, 3-pronged adapters - remember those? Snap them into the center of the 45 when you couldn't find the adapter that came with the stereo. Anyway, I have lots of memories of my mother and Uncle dancing. My sister and I would try to mimic them - until I wound her up and let her go anyway! ;) Ah, kids.

I swear I listened to that song a hundred times in that cabin - and for that reason, it always reminds me of my 'Nuckle' Dave as I used to call him. So it popped up on my playlist tonight and I look over and the kids are dancing. I've kind of infected them with the dancing bug. We have a lot of fun dancing and surely they think their Dad is a big goofball. Think Tom Cruise in Risky Business - except not always in my underwear. It's fun. Lauren is doing a Mommy dance, I don't know what's it's called - I'm old enough to remember vinyl records but not old enough to remember the 60s, not due to drugs - just that I was late, very late to the 60s. She's doing the one with the peace sign sweeping passed her eyes - alternating hands and making all kinds of noise with her legs and feet.

It's funny and it just reminded me to tell you - dance with your children and dance with your spouse in front of your children. You have to be humble to be a great parent and dancing will humble you as fast as anything. You also need to show your children that you don't take yourself too seriously. If life was meant to be taken so seriously, we wouldn't have all been born buck-naked.

Ha! I just used naked and dancing in the same story. ;)