If you keep on dancing, you’ll never grow old

I am, save a brief, glorious run in the 1968 Green Bay Park and Rec tap and ballet recital, a relegated kitchen dancer.

Untrained but unfettered, I dance with dirty pots and pans, dish towels and brooms. I dance because the music moves me. It makes that post dinner pot-scouring time pass much more quickly, and allows my pre-breakfast tea-sipping mornings to steep with joy.

While I’m most comfortable hoofing across the forgiving hardwood of my own kitchen floor, I certainly don’t limit myself to that venue.

I’ve danced to Muzak in the cereal aisle of our local grocery store, to live music among thousands of my closest friends in enormous stadiums, to a mix tape in a gym full of sweaty boot campers, and to the quiet hum of a lullaby while cradling a precious, sleeping baby.

I’ve waltzed with my nonagenarian neighbor at the Harvest Moon Ball, and oom pah pah-ed merrily around a sweaty pavilion to the tune of a polka band.

Last week, I danced at a Steve Miller Band concert at which he sang this:

I don’t know but I’ve been told.

If you keep on dancing, you’ll never grow old.

I like the way that man thinks. And, the 71-year old, still rocking Miller seems to be living his lyrics.

I believe, from the not coincidentally named balls of my dancing feet, to the steady beat of my dancing heart, that God made human beings to dance.

If you haven’t danced in a while, it’s time. Celebrate an ordinary Wednesday by be-bopping across your kitchen floor.

It will do your heart good.