Eighteen years ago, I was in Atlanta for a business trip. Kent and I worked for the same large company then, and had met in another meeting for the same gigantic project a couple of months earlier. I knew him only slightly, and we had not (by anyone’s standards) been on a date nor did I really know he was interested in me. All of those details matter for this story.
Anyway—there were about 80 of us on that trip and the days were incredibly long, with contentious meetings scheduled for about 10 hours a day. As it happened. St. Patrick’s Day fell on a Wednesday and by then, a group of us were desperate for a bit of a break, so we all went out for dinner and then looked for someplace to go dancing.
By the time we found a place, it was pretty late. But the music was good, the beer wasn’t horribly expensive and we needed a way to blow off some steam.
On the dance floor, I noticed a man doing a very athletic version of the Electric Slide. He had clearly had a lot of dance training, and was really quite good. I’ve always like to dance, and I was intrigued. I started trying to add in the steps he was doing, and pretty soon he and I were dancing away as he taught me his version. But this version was truly very athletic: think squats and then leaps. You can imagine how tiring it was! I finally had to stop and I thanked him for working with me and told him I was going to go get a beer.
And here’s where it gets kind of sweet. The dancer said OK, and then he pointed at Kent. “I’ll go teach your husband how to do this dance.” If I remember correctly, I sort of sputtered something about not being married and then got a beer.
I told Kent, of course, and over the three years when I wouldn’t date him we would sometimes get together on our “anniversary” and have a laugh. OK I had a laugh. I don’t know what that man in the bar saw, but he clearly saw something in the way Kent watched me. And here we are, married for nearly 14 years.
Here's a video of that dance (obviously not me hahaha!):
Anyway—there were about 80 of us on that trip and the days were incredibly long, with contentious meetings scheduled for about 10 hours a day. As it happened. St. Patrick’s Day fell on a Wednesday and by then, a group of us were desperate for a bit of a break, so we all went out for dinner and then looked for someplace to go dancing.
By the time we found a place, it was pretty late. But the music was good, the beer wasn’t horribly expensive and we needed a way to blow off some steam.
On the dance floor, I noticed a man doing a very athletic version of the Electric Slide. He had clearly had a lot of dance training, and was really quite good. I’ve always like to dance, and I was intrigued. I started trying to add in the steps he was doing, and pretty soon he and I were dancing away as he taught me his version. But this version was truly very athletic: think squats and then leaps. You can imagine how tiring it was! I finally had to stop and I thanked him for working with me and told him I was going to go get a beer.
And here’s where it gets kind of sweet. The dancer said OK, and then he pointed at Kent. “I’ll go teach your husband how to do this dance.” If I remember correctly, I sort of sputtered something about not being married and then got a beer.
I told Kent, of course, and over the three years when I wouldn’t date him we would sometimes get together on our “anniversary” and have a laugh. OK I had a laugh. I don’t know what that man in the bar saw, but he clearly saw something in the way Kent watched me. And here we are, married for nearly 14 years.
Here's a video of that dance (obviously not me hahaha!):
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