And I Can't Dance...

When Phil Collins sang, “I can’t dance,” in that scratchy Phil Collins type of way, it was as though he were singing to me. The stereotype that exist that white guys can't dance may not be true, but it's right on the money when discussing me.

While this stereotype is more laughable then it is offensive, it’s still no fun to have to deal with. When I've been drinking and since video devices are on everything, my embarrassment is usually played out the very next day by simply connecting a cord to a television or computer.

The worst descision I ever madeabout dancing occured at a wedding in Cali, Colombia. To understand how a wedding could go so wrong I should explain a custom that exist in this beautiful South American country. There are two major games that accompany a wedding; catching the garter and catching the bouquet. I participated in the garter catch, but they just don’t throw it there--no, they give you a glass of whiskey, and not just a small glass, but like thirty-five ounces. Then you take a swig, and pass it along the line of un-married gentlemen. You swig and pass until the bride raises her hand, and when she does the guy holding the whiskey gets the garter.

Feeling a little loose I attempt to salsa. Thinking that what I’m doing is turning the dance floor into gold, I continued, unaware that there were snickers of laughter behind me and camera phones pointed in my direction. My hips are moving, but it’s like steel trying to become flexible. Salsa is supposed to be this limber sexy dance, and when I do it resembles a seventy-three-year-old hip replacement patient doing the Macarena.

I return back to my table and it looked as though someone stapled a smile onto their faces. My dancing had drawn the stares, and then smiles, of the whole room. My cousin said, “You are so going to pay for that when the video gets back.”

My final embarrassment of the wedding came in the form of another game. The entire wedding party gathers in a circle and one by one a person enters, dances for about fifteen seconds, and then pulls someone else in. Oblivious to almost everything I get drawn into the middle of the circle. Like most people when they are put into a situation like that, I do what comes natural, imitation of Marky Mark dancing with the funky bunch.

My hands somehow get to a 110 degree angle and start circling. Then, completely unprovoked my left arm bends to behind my ear, my right arm finds my foot, and I shake my mid-section like I’m having an allergic reaction to air. For nearly twenty-five seconds I shake, turn, bounce, and gyrate nearly every part of my body. With what I’m doing I feel like there should be sound affects above me of rusted steel being stacked or something to indicate how un-natural these motions are to my body.

I hate to admit that Phil Collins is right, but I can’t dance, and that stereotype that white guys can’t dance is just proved every time that I find a drink in my hand and a foot on any dance floor. I guess the best way to end this stereotype is for me to stop dancing, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, listen to Phil Collins.