Belle Weather (11 page)

Maybe it’s because I got hooked on watching
Dancing with the Stars.
Maybe it’s because we’ve been married for nearly twenty years and the closest thing to a formal dance step hubby and I can do is the hokey pokey and sometimes even that doesn’t work out because I forget to put my whole self in.

Whatever the reason, here we were, every Sunday afternoon, taking Beginning Ballroom Dance classes in a mirror-lined room alongside a dozen other jittery couples wearing “Hello” nametags.

In my mind, I would be Lisa Rinna to hubby’s Harry Hamlin. We’d be good at this, possibly even great.

After all, didn’t we have several decades’ experience standing around with our eyes closed, swinging our heads from side to side during
Free Bird
? We had rhythm. Sort of.

The first class, hubby thought it would be hilarious to drape himself over me and grab my butt cheeks with both his hands in a little sentimental shout-out to the way everybody danced back in high school.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know that’s what he was doing and I just screeched, “What the hell is
wrong
with you, asshole? We’re supposed to be having
fun
!”

The other couples looked at us funny. About half were our age, and half were young, fresh-faced engaged couples who wanted to look good for their wedding dance. So young, so wide-eyed and filled with love and understanding for one another. I could feel my lunch creep upward.

I wanted to mess with their sweet heads a little.

“Hey,” I said to the bride-to-be who looked all of twenty years old. “What does it mean when your husband is in your bed, gasping for breath, and calling your name over and over?”

“I don’t know, what?” she said, blushing and smiling.

“It means you didn’t hold the pillow down long enough! Hahahahahahaha!”

“That’s horrible!” she said.

“No, hon, horrible is when you realize that both of you have started ordering the pizza
before
you have sex because you know you’ll be done way before twenty minutes and that way, there won’t be any lag time.”

“Well, that’s not very romantic,” said the bride-to-be.

“Romantic? Right. Get back to me the first time he asks you to ‘see what you can squeeze outta that zit on my back’ and here’s the kicker! You’ll
enjoy
it.”

So far, between hubby’s impromptu butt-cheek-grab and my sick sense of humor, we were zero for two as far as making friends with our Introduction to Beginning Ballroom Dance I for Beginners classmates.

While the perky marriage-minded couples were fun to watch, I felt more of a kinship with the elderly couple that fought all the time and always arrived with the distinct odor of bourbon wafting in the door behind them.

Dance-wise, things weren’t going great. Along about week four, I felt ashamed that I had ever poked fun at Jerry Springer’s spazzy turn on
Stars.
He was a
god
of dancing, a regular Mario López Baryshnikov compared to me.

The problem?

Our teacher, a wonderfully graceful woman who always appeared to float a couple of inches over the dance floor, took me aside and explained it simply: “My dear, you have a wobbly box.”

Hubby’s jaw dropped.

“I beg your pardon?” I said.

“A wobbly box,” she repeated, not even attempting to lower her voice. “It’s OK, dear, a lot of women have the same problem.”

Oh, sweet Jesus, take me now on account of I’m fairly certain I’m going to die of total and complete humiliation right this minute.

“Look,” said hubby, suddenly feeling chivalrous. “I don’t want to argue with an expert, but I simply have to say that my wife’s box is not wobbly, not even close. And how would you know anyway?”

I looked at him with love-filled eyes. He was my hero, defending my, er, box.

“Because, dear,” she said, looking directly at my husband. “I’ve been teaching dance for many years and when I see that someone’s box step is a tad out of line, I just feel that I must try to correct it. You just can’t go through these classes successfully with a wobbly box step.”

Oh. We knew that.

“Gawd,” I hissed at hubby. “What did you
think
she meant? You are such a perv sometimes.”

Our teacher, too kind and innocent to even understand what had just transpired, patted my hand.

“You’ll get it; it just takes time,” she said. “You know it took me at least six months to learn the box step.”

“Really?”

“Of course not.”

A few minutes later, she selected hubby to demonstrate a new step, and I have to admit that now that he finally had a decent partner, he was dancing like John O’ Freakin’ Hurley.

Unfortunately, or perhaps because he was still smarting from the whole “perv” comment, this seemed to empower hubby to become the Family Dance Expert.

He began to orchestrate little impromptu practice sessions throughout the week.

“I’m honestly worried about your merengue,” he said gravely one night.

“I’m honestly worried about your chances of living to attend the next class,” I said.

The next Sunday, hubby practically fainted with pleasure when the instructor reminded us the male is always in charge and we must follow his lead at all times.

“Excuse me,” I said, raising my hand. “You do realize that you’re asking me to follow a man who gets lost driving to the mailbox, right?”

The truth was, I was having trouble making the transition from being our family’s “decider” to following hubby’s lead on the dance floor.

“Follow his core, dear!” the instructor would say as she magically appeared at my elbow like Tinkerbell, floating above the floor and whispering into my ear.

“You heard her,” said hubby. “You’re totally ignoring my core and stuff.”

“Where is your core?” I asked.

“It’s in the, er, esophageal area or perhaps the phalangeal area. Wherever it is, I’ve got one and you shouldn’t be ignoring it.”

And with that, he took me into his arms, pulled me close to his chest-core type space and, somehow, steered me into a perfect sequence of tricky rock steps.

He really was so much better at this dancing thing than me. I could imagine
Stars’
Emmitt Smith voicing soft approval: “You’re the big easy now, dawg” he would say to my husband.

With his new fancy-dancer status, hubby was really getting to be a bit of a handful around the house. We’d been at it for ten weeks and, while my box no longer wobbled, it was obvious that hubby was the dance talent in our household.

Which is why I didn’t want him to see the newspaper article that reported that tall people are smarter.

His ego was already getting out of control.

I hid the morning paper in the dishwasher, the one place I was sure he’d never find it.

“Hmmm,” he said, holding the curiously soggy newspaper that he had found (!) as he lowered his 6-foot-4-inch self into a chair meant for a much dumber person.

“It says here that Princeton researchers have discovered that tall people have advanced verbal and numerical skills,” he crowed.

“That’s ridiculous,” I managed. “What about Yoda? He’s really wise.”

“He’s a character in a
movie,
” hubby said with obvious, high I.Q.’d impatience. “I’m talking about real people, like, say,
me
!”

“Oh, great,” I pouted. “I knew you were going to get a lot of acreage out of this just because I’m only five-three.”

He gave me an icy I’m-better’n-you look. And where did he get that damned smoking jacket? “You mean mileage, don’t you? Not acreage. I know that expression because I am tall.”

Damn this report published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (motto: “Tall but Unlaid”).

“It says here that taller children as young as three perform significantly better on cognitive tests,” said hubby. “You do know what I mean when I say ‘cognitive,’ don’t you?”

“Don’t make me hurt you.”

“It’s the process of using knowledge in the broadest sense,” he said. “This includes perception, memory, judgment, the whole, if you will, enchilada.”

“Sorry but I’m too short to understand all but the enchilada part of what you just said,” I said, sarcasm dripping from my words like, well, something that drips a lot.

For some reason, ever since hubby had discovered the smart-tall connection, I was feeling shorter and dumber by the second.

“There are plenty of people who are tall but not smart,” I said, while fervently trying to find my mouth with a forkful of peas. Tricky pea bastards.

“No, not really,” said hubby. “Think about it. We’ve got Abraham Lincoln; you’ve got Tom Cruise.”

Zing!

This must be how Pluto felt. You go through your whole life feeing like a pretty good planet, worthy of textbook illustrations and pop quizzes and cute little planet jingles to help everyone remember the correct order from the sun—My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas—and then you realize you’ll never be pizza again. Or much of anything else except an oversized gas bag.

Speaking of which, there was hubby again, still crowing about his height advantage.

That night, he suggested we should go see
An Inconvenient Truth
but I wanted to see
Big Momma’s House 2
instead. Hmmm. Two hours of Al Gore earnestly yammering about melting ice caps versus Martin Lawrence going undercover as an old fat lady to kick some terrorist ass. Talk about your no-brainer.

My self-esteem was taking a beating, though. I was short and therefore not smart
and
my fox-trot looked more like the frothy lunging movements of a rabid wolf.

As if all this wasn’t enough, hubby came home one day showing me an article he’d seen about how Leos are better drivers. As in the ass-trological sign, not as in DiCaprio.

Leos, of which duh-hubby is one, are the best drivers on the road according to a new study, although I’m not sure it’s right.

Wasn’t this the same man who had borrowed my car recently and returned it with a missing side mirror because he hit an
ambulance
?

“Well,” he pouted. “That ambulance was asking for it.”

As a Virgo, I was curious to see where I stood. After all, Virgos are known for uncommon wisdom and restraint in all matters except perhaps the reading of
Soap Opera Digest
and eating fried pickles with ranch dressing.

Turns out Virgos ranked fourth. Not bad, but not great. Libras were the worst, by the way.

What does it all mean?

Well, as we all know, the auto insurance industry is forever on the lookout for ways to ensure that its clients are paying the lowest possible premiums, so you should probably bring the study to the attention of your agent the next time you’re up for renewal. I’m sure the agent will hasten to reduce your policy rates unless he has choked on his own laughter and dropped dead. Then again, if you’re a Libra, you might want to lay low and hope the insurance company never finds out or you’ll wind up driving one of those little wind-up bikes beside the highway with all the drunk losers.

Our daughter’s a Gemini, which was second best, and I’m relieved, even though she’s still eight years away from getting her license. However she will never be allowed to ride with Libras (duh) or the other signs in the bottom three, Aries and Aquarius. She also won’t be allowed to ride with Scorpio men because everyone knows they have just one thing on their mind.

In the meantime, hubby was convinced he was superior for another reason: He had gotten very, very good at Sudoku. An evil temptress, the cheap little tart, flimsy and soulless as paper, was stealing his heart every single night as we climbed into bed.

Who knew that “Sudoku” was Japanese for “You’re not getting laid again.”

Men can’t resist these “wordless crosswords” that act as kryptonite to the entire Victoria’s Secret inventory.

At least I know I’m not alone.

My friend, Susie, said she emerged from the bathroom recently trailing the scent of luscious bath oils and wearing a new black chemise. There was passion in her eyes as she walked toward the bed and saw her hubby, Fred, fretfully erasing and muttering.

“Honey?” she purred softly. “How do you like my outfit?”

Fred looked up for a second, grunted distractedly, and returned to his puzzle. “In a minute,” he said. “I can’t believe I didn’t see that eight. What was I thinking?”

Yes, Fred, what
were
you thinking?

Frankly, Southern women don’t know how to fight the Sudoku slut. We’re usually quite gifted at dispatching man-encroaching hoochies to the four winds but
this
?

To be fair, which I just hate, we may have been doing some ignoring our own selves. Did we not just say no when Lifetime premiered
The Mermaid Chair
? But this was Kim Basinger seducing a priest while her crazy mama hovered in the background and chopped off her own fingers one by one! Surely we get a pass for that.

To be rejected for a bunch of blank squares just seems wrong. Still, I guess I understand.

Sudoku lures men away from us with promises of being “light and easy,” qualities any thinking male absolutely loves. But then they better beware. Next is “demanding” and, finally, Sudoku becomes “very challenging.”

Oh, sure, Sudoku is all “beer and ballgames are fun!” at first but watch out, guys. Before long, there are three numbers where there were once six already filled out and, next thing you know, it’s “Mama’s coming to live with us and I need me a Lexus and I signed us up for ballroom dance lessons starting next week.”

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.