Dancing as a Medicare senior has its challenges. Where to go? What to wear? Wear a mask? Last night I found myself at a restaurant/bar called Wise Girl’s, where the owner had remodeled to make room for a stage and more tables. The live band, the Groove Doctors, were there, with two great female leads and a horn section. They played the oldies and also the new stuff by Lizzo, Justin Timberlake, Dua Lipa, and others. For some reason they threw in a bunch of ABBA songs last night, not my favorite. The band had glow sticks for everyone to wear, which added to the party atmosphere.
Two not-quite Medicare Meet-up groups had reserved multiple tables, and people wore New Year’s hats and stuff, two+ weeks late. Veronica had a birthday, and man, did she get a huge Meet-up cheer when she walked in! Everyone should get that treatment on their birthday.
I sat with a gal friend and dancing-guy friend. Then my tall friend walked in, the king of dancing. You know who you are, Wilbur (not his real name). I waved, and he came over and sat down. I gave him a box of panettone, an Italian pastry that is too mellow to make an impression. The colorful shiny packaging sold me, though, and I bought two towers of 5 boxes each at Costco to give as Christmas gifts to my extended family. It turned out that half my family didn’t show for Christmas for various reasons (working abroad, at the in-laws, home with a baby on the other side of the country, etc). So, I had leftover panettone. Wilbur picked the chocolate one. Then he was off to meet and greet his fan club of lady dancers.
Dancing Guy ordered a salad and then ate two of my panettone offerings. I asked Wilbur to help me with my glowstick issues, and we ended up doing the cha cha to Santana’s Corazon Espinado. Man, can Wilbur dance!
At one point I went to the bathroom, stood in line through two songs (Rolling Stones and ?), then finally got to go in and take off a layer (it was the middle layer I wanted to ditch, not the top layer). Dancing with 100 friends gets very hot. When I say friends I mean I recognized virtually everyone on the floor, all the regulars, looking for their dance fix. It had been over two weeks for me.
When I left the bathroom, Dancing guy friend asked me to dance right there between the tables where it wasn’t so hot. As we danced, I noticed I had something stuck to my boot. It was white. It was long. OMG. Was it toilet paper?
That’s a joke, you know, to come out of the bathroom with toilet paper stuck to your shoe. Dancing Guy put his shoe on it and I pulled my boot away. I became unstuck and now Dancing guy had TP stuck to his shoe. Then Girlfriend came over and put her shoe on it so Dancing Guy could pull his shoe away. Now it was stuck to Girlfriend’s shoe.
By this point, we three were both embarrassed and laughing that we couldn’t ditch the TP. Finally, I took a panettone wrapper and bent down to grab it with the wrapper.
I got it!
“You need to wash your hands!” Dancing Guy said.
“No, I didn’t touch it!” I said.
With the TP and wrapper placed on the extra chair, we were free, yet again, to get our groove on, with 100, hopefully, non-COVIDY friends.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 