As the party wound down, several people independently stopped by our table to say that they enjoyed dancing with me and/or watching me dance.

As the Nakedvillains will attest, I enjoy myself on the dance floor.

This is not to say that I’m not the whitest, most “rhythmically challenged” man in the Western Hemisphere.

But my lack of self-conciousness seems to be contagious. Well, people think to themselves, I don’t normally dance, but look at that spastic goon! I’ll look like Fred Astaire next to him. Hey honey, want to dance?

I dance with the young. I dance with the old - one of my wife’s friends’ grandmother still talks about how she danced with that nice young man at Laura’s wedding. I now spend a lot of time dancing with my daughter on my shoulders. I’ll break it down - “Hammer”-style. I’ll shoulder pop, swing, mash potato, electric slide, macarena, and twist. Hell, I’ll funky chicken.

I can’t backspin anymore - my level of friction and inertia seems to have increased over the years. And I can’t do it as long anymore. When I was fifteen years younger and forty pounds lighter at Longwood I could dance for hours. Now I have to rest every once and a while.

It is good to serve a purpose. Mine is to “get this party started.”