For example, there is my inability to throw out a tissue, because maybe, just maybe, there is a useable inch on it somewhere that might come in handy later.
And there’s my mental blockage that prevents me from putting my clothes into the hamper. Instead, I’ve created a clothing purgatory on the floor where the clothes that are not-quite-dirty but not-exactly-clean have piled up into a monstrous heap that has sprouted arms and legs and I’m pretty sure is responsible for the mysterious disappearance of our cat.
And then there’s my inability to ever (Ever!) remove my socks. (I know what you’re visualizing right now. Stop it.) I can’t help it. I need them. My wife married me, socks and all, and it’s too late now to ask me to change. My socks. (Riotous laughter.)
But I admit that I probably am to blame for the thing that bothers my wife the most. Namely, my irresistable compulsion to make fun of her while she’s doing yoga. I should probably mention that my compulsion also involves lying down on the couch with a bag of potato chips and giving play-by-play color commentary.
“Whoa! You’ll feel that one tomorrow!”
“Those unitards really ride up on you, huh?”
“Wow, that’s not a flattering position!”
“That one should be illegal!”
“Smile for the camera!”
It’s really nothing personal against my wife. I’d pretty much make fun of anyone I caught rolling around on a rubber mat in a Spandex suit in the middle of my living room. Especially if that person was Anna Nicole Smith.
Now, I understand that everyone has his methods of relaxation. What I don’t get is why my wife’s method has to involve a video tape featuring Captain Banana Pants giving yoga instructions in nothing but a pair of immodest purple tights.
“Begin,” says the Captain, “by lifting both legs over your head, like this, and placing your right elbow into your left ear, like this. Good. Now, yank your own head back by the hair and firmly insert a finger into each of your nostrils. Advanced students may opt to insert the entire fist. This position is called Beautiful Flower Drinking Rainwater.
“Now, point two fingers directly at your eyes. Slowly bring your fingers in towards your face. At the last minute, raise your left hand and hold it in front of your nose, thereby blocking your fingers from poking you in the eyes. This is called the Nyuck Nyuck position.
“Lowering yourself to the ground, slowly coil your body into the Cobra position, unhinge your jaw, and swallow your own leg up to the knee cap. And remember, folks – relax! That’s what this is about, after all!”
As the Captain speaks, his students writhe around on the floor, contorting themselves into positions normally reserved for people being eaten by a dinosaur. Meanwhile, my wife is managing to make the whole painful process look easy, gracefully shifting her body from the Spitting Camel into the Surprised Chipmunk with the greatest of ease.
Nobody enjoys my wife’s yoga sessions more than the dog, who always manages to squeeze in a round of his favorite game, King of the Mountain, on my wife’s head. One minute, I’m watching my wife stretch out on the floor. The next thing I know, our little Jack Russel is perched on the back of her head with a look that says, “Look what a good dog I am!”
“Mmmph!” my wife yells.
“What?” I say.
“Mmmmmmph!!!!” she yells.
“I can’t understand you, there’s a dog on your head,” I explain.
And then we laugh. Well, I laugh.
I can usually lure the dog off my wife’s head by waving one of my potato chips around in the air for a few minutes. I’d get off the couch and help, but I don’t want to get my socks dirty.
Another hazard of my wife’s yoga is our cats’ drive-by rubbings. The cats, who have been lying in one spot giving themselves a bath since 1998, decide that now is the time to show how much they love my wife by running up and flopping all over her feet. Which is OK if she’s standing up straight, but a little precarious if she’s in the middle of a One-handed Inverted Moose, for example.
I think the most unsettling thing about her yoga has got to be the breathing exercises, which involve the kind gutteral snorts and phlegmy growls one might expect to hear from a congested grizzly bear. The first time I heard it, I thought an angry rhinocerous had somehow meandered its way into our living room. I ran in from the kitchen with a flyswater and a frying pan, ready for battle, to find my wife in a leotard with her leg wrapped around her neck three times, a cat stuck to her shin, and our dog perched on her forehead.
Who said that yoga wasn’t a spectator sport?
As you may or may not know, Jack Russells are famous for two things: their hyperactivity and their ability to, while you’re standing up, hit you in the face with their wet nose approximately 10 times per second.
But when you’re wandering the halls of the Humane Society looking for a dog, and you see a little, shaking puppy with big brown eyes, and he’s crying out, “Ri ruv roo!” and looking helpless, it’s easy to forget which kind of dog you swore you would never, ever allow into your house.
The puppy hypnotized us with cuteness. Before we knew it, we were back in the car, driving home with a brand new dog filling our brand new back seat with piles of brand new vomit.
I, for one, was excited about owning a nervous little dog, mostly because they make for a great conversation piece at parties. Consider this scene:
Cocktail party. Lights down low. Sinatra humming in the background. Enter my nervous little dog, vibrating its way across the floor between our guests’ legs. Amused friends point, giggle, and say something like, “Look at that shaky little dog!” At which point I pull out a real zinger like, “Yeah, he’s been drinking espressos all day!” We all have a hearty laugh, and my friends wipe their eyes, pat me on the back, and say things like, “You did it again, Jeff!” and “It must be exhausting being so funny all the time!” and “Aaah! Your dog just ate my baby!”
They say this because, as it turns out, once we got him home, our new dog turned into the devil. Tongue flapping in the wind, he darted about the house in evil glee, spraying pee on the floor, eating the couch cushions, bulldozing the cats, knocking over lamps, and, finally, relieving himself in the worst way on the recliner.
“OK. So. Back to the pound he goes,” I said.
“But, I love him!” my wife said, scooping up the dog and running up the stairs.
“... Yes, of course you do,” I muttered.
A few ruined carpets, mangled slippers, and sleepless nights later, it was time to officially name the dog. We needed something that was fitting to his demeanor. I had to veto Sweetums, Snuggledog, and Puppernutter from my wife’s list. Likewise, she overruled my initial suggestions of Satan, Crappy, and The Worst Dog in the World. After much debate, we eventually agreed on “Henry” (French for “eats his own poop”).
Determined to take some wind out of his sails, my wife decided to take Henry to the vet for The Big Snip. I thought it would be funny to change his name from He-nry to It-nry after the neutering, but was shot down.
In her defense, my wife did give Henry plenty of warning, mostly in the form of threatening “scissor fingers.”
“Henry! Snip snip!” she’d say, opening and closing her scissor fingers menacingly at the dog. “Get off the couch!”
“Henry! Snip snip! Don’t pee in the house!”
“Henry! Snip snip! Drop that baby!”
“Snip snip!” “Snip snip!” “Snip snip!”
But in the end, poor Henry would meet the fate suffered by so many ’N Sync members before him: castration. He returned home a day later, stripped of his dignity (among other things) and wearing a lamp shade around his neck.
As far as I can tell, all we accomplished by having Henry neutered was decreasing his wind resistance. Within two days of The Big Snip, he was back in action, shattering his own speed records for finding a sock, chewing up the sock, eating the sock, puking up the sock, and bringing it to us in bed.
I have learned to appreciate the little things about Henry, like how he sometimes gets so excited to see us that he pees a little (When’s the last time anyone got that excited to see you?), and how, when he’s tired enough, he’ll let us put little reindeer antlers on his head and take pictures.
Not that any of this compensates for the three pillows, the couch, the recliner, the two floormats, and the backyard the dog has destroyed. Also on the casualty list is our elderly cat, Mr. Puddy, who now spends most of his time trying to keep Henry’s ice-cold nose out of his most private of areas. The rest of his time is spent communicating his displeasure in subtle ways, like shredding our chair legs down to the width of Ally McBeal.
The other day, I walked into the basement to find Henry enjoying the last of a little delicacy we like to call “the cat’s litter box.” A clever dog to the end, he decided not to squander this treasure trove of deliciousness, but rather to save some treats for later. That’s the only explanation I have for why, that evening, I discovered litter-coated cat nuggets in my shoe. After my foot was in it.
“That’s it! I have had enough! That dog goes back to the pound tomorrow!” I yelled with authority.
My wife turned to me, raised one eyebrow, and began waving her scissor fingers in my direction. “Jeff! Snip snip!” she said.
“Um, never mind,” I said, and scampered out the door to buy a new recliner for Henry to defile.
Other good ways to wake up might involve a breakfast catered by French maids. Some would involve waking up on the tour bus of my world-famous rock band. Almost all of them would involve Ashley Judd in some way.
But none of them would involve anything close to the way that I woke up the other night, at 3:30 a.m., to the delightful sounds of a hardcore porn film blaring through the walls of my neighbors apartment.
My wife and I shot up out of bed, our ears ringing with the shrieks of what we could only assume was a cat on fire. We ran around the bedroom in circles, screaming, trying to figure out what was happening.
What?
Where?
Look out!
Someones being murdered!
Someone set the cat on fire!
Its Armageddon!
Jump out the window to safety!
Call 911!
Wait! Is that ...?
No ...
Yeah, I think it is.
No ...
It was. It was porn. I cant believe we just woke up to porn, said my wife. She stood still for a moment, trying to decide whether she should be laughing or crying, and compromised with a little of both.
I picked up my shoe and started whacking at the wall as if it were covered with boy bands. Dude! Turn! Down! That! Porn! I mean, Im all for free speech and everything, but not when that free speech is coming from Doctor Spankypants and his team of Naughty Nurses at 3:30 in the morning.
The TV was blaring. My wife was yelling. The dog was barking. The cat was not on fire, so that was good, but it was still running around and hissing. I was about as happy as Jerry Falwell at a gay pride convention.
Evidently, my neighbors porn was so loud that they failed to hear our rap-rap-rapping at their chamber door. So we went and made some popcorn and tried to pass the time writing dialogue for the worlds most unlikely porn stars. Heres a partial list:
George W. Bush: Lets you and me get romantistic. Love-making requires careful strategery.
Al Gore: Call me President! Ive got the key to that lock-box! I demand a recount on sexual favors!
Yoda: Love to me you will make. Much to learn you have in bed.
Chewbacca: Arrrrrr.
The neighbors had evidently rented a porno epic. It simply did not stop. We felt dirty.
I decided I was going to put a stop to this once and for all, in the only way I knew how call my mommy.
Put that phone down! said my wife. You will march next door, and you will use any means necessary to make the neighbors turn off the porn! I put on my jacket, laced up my boots, stormed out the door, remembered I wasnt wearing any pants, went back inside, put on some pants, and stormed out the door again.
I trudged around the house to the neighbors door and rang the bell. A young girl with wild hair, ghostly white skin, and pupils the size of a baseball hung her head out the door.
Hi. We havent met. I live next door, I said.
Silence.
Its 3:30 in the morning. Is there any chance you would consider turning down your porn? I asked.
Silence.
Yeah, that would be great, if you could turn down your porn. Your porn. The loud porn in your apartment. If you could turn it down, thatd be great. The porn.
Oh, she croaked. The TVs on? Ill get it.
Now, I dont know a whole lot about porn, but I do know that it doesnt normally just turn itself on. (It turns other people on! Ha ha ha ha!) Yet, my neighbor seemed surprised to learn that her TV was on, which I cant begin to explain. Had somebody broken into her house, stuffed her ears with cotton, turned on a porn movie, and snuck back out? Was there a Porn Bandit on the loose?
Regardless, the porn was turned off, and I returned home to a heros welcome, by which I mean the dog had crapped on the floor. Eventually, I made it back to my bedroom, where my wife was already sound asleep. I shuffled across the floor, threw the cat off the bed, threw the cat off the bed again, and again, and, delirious with exhaustion, crawled under the covers and shut my eyes.
Which is right about the time that the neighbors dog started barking.
When I was in fourth grade, my parents thought it would be a good idea to dress me up as a California Raisin for Halloween.
I found myself standing in the middle of the living room, wearing nothing but a pair of my sister’s tights and a brown trash bag over my head. My parents, snorting and giggling, were on the floor, wadding up newspaper and cramming it up into the giant trash bag. Once the bag was stuffed to capacity, my parents tied it off around my waist and cut a hole for my face to stick through.
I waddled over to the mirror, my arms sticking straight out over the bulk of my costume. I looked in the mirror. I looked like giant poop. I looked at my parents. They stood with their hands covering their mouths, their faces red, their bodies shaking. My mother had tears in her eyes. My father had a vein swelling up in his forehead like a cartoon thermometer.
“Son,” my father said, choking, “You’ll be the best-looking terd-with-legs in the whole neighborhood.” And with that, my parents collapsed on the floor in hysterics, panting, wheezing, slapping the floor, occasionally pausing to get a glimpse of my poop costume before erupting with another fit of laughter.
I left my parents rolling on the floor, grabbed my trick-or-treat pail, and headed out the door to impress the neighborhood kids, who had nothing but kind and supportive things to say.
“Check it out! The fat kid’s dressed up like a giant terd!” said one.
“Hey, terd-brain, why don’t you crawl back into the gigantic ass you came from?” added another.
“Give us your candy, fatty, or we’ll spray-paint all over your poop-suit!” said my girlfriend.
When you’re a short, pudgy, pigeon-toed nerdling trapped inside an air-tight poop-suit, the odds are stacked against you. I spent the next few hours darting from house to house, hovering in the bushes and waiting for a lull in the trick-or-treating. When the coast was clear, I would waddle to the door to get my candy, much to the confusion of the homeowners.
“Oh, look Howard, we have another trick-or-treater!”
“What the hell is he wearing?”
“He’s a ... he’s a ... Just give him some candy, Howard.”
“But the kid’s dressed up like a giant poo!”
“Just give him the candy, Howard!”
And so forth.
Eventually, I’d get my candy and shuffle off into the bushes like Quasimodo on a sugar high. On and on I ran, prancing among the trees, my enormous, pear-shaped trash bag flapping in the breeze, my arms suspended in the air, my pupils dialiated, and my tongue wagging out of my mouth in fat, pre-pubescent delight.
My shoes were untied, my tights were riding up something fierce, and I had to pee. Could I do anything about it? No, my arms were useless! But I didn’t care! I was free, free like a piglet loose from the barn! On and on this went until I had a run-in with a rough-looking group of kids. They were menacing, with muscles bigger than mine. They demanded that I hand over my candy, which I did, but not before boldly peeing my pants. Then I ran off, swearing revenge.
Someday I’ll get those girls!
Parents, don’t let this happen to your children. Don’t send them out of the house in a poop-suit. Please, consider their future. Because once you’ve walked around in front of your peers wearing your sister’s black tights, you are doomed to a life of nerdery. I was never one of the cool kids again. Of course, I followed the poop-suit incident with a series of brilliant moves like joining the marching band, parting my hair in the middle, and pegging my pants, none of which really helped my situation. But the point is, you can improve your child’s life by making sure he or she doesn’t leave the house in a terrible costume this Halloween. Allow me to give you a few examples:
Good costume: Gene Simmons
Bad costume: Richard Simmons
Good costume: an extreme BMX biker
Bad costume: the biker from the Village People
Good costume: Prince’s buttless pants
Bad costume: Meat Loaf’s buttless pants
Good costume: Captain America
Bad costume: Captain Underpants
Good custume: chicken suit
Bad costume: poop-suit
If you have already sent your child out trick-or-treating in an embarrassing costume, don’t worry. Sure, his or her life will be a living hell for the next several years, but your child still has every chance of becoming a “cool” person with no nerdy tendencies whatsoever. Like me, for example.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get in line for “Lord of the Rings II” tickets.
Now see the fat kid. See the fat kid drop the ball and lose the game. See him fall into the mud and cry like a little schoolgirl. See the other boys give him a wedgie up to his ears. See the fat kid run home to mommy. Run, fat kid, run!
See the fat kid grow up to be a writer with a grudge against sports.
I have come to accept the fact that I am athletically retarded. I have as much of a chance of catching a ball on the fly as I do of catching a cold from making out with Jennifer Lopez.
The only thing I like less than playing sports is watching sports. On average, I watch about three games a year. One is the Super Bowl. The other two are the random games I catch while sitting in a bar when I can’t find where they hide the remote.
While I will never be a sports fan, I have nothing against people who are. You can’t blame a sports fan for loving sports any more than you can blame Ashley Judd for being hot for my body. For example.
But to some sports fans, a guy who doesn’t follow sports is like a bull with no horns, if you catch my drift. To them, I am one rung below Richard Simmons on the manliness ladder. I might as well show up at the sports bar wearing a pink tutu and a tiara. Which I look good in, but my wife hates, because I stretch out her tights.
“Do you at least know who won last year’s Super Bowl?” my friends ask, trying to help me salvage some dignity. To which I boldly reply, “... Was it the Phillies?”
All they can do is smile uncomfortably and look at me like I just peed my pants. I try to cover up my mistake by adjusting myself in public and making a quick boob joke about the waitress, but it’s too late. Once you’ve revealed your nerdery in front of your sports-fan friends, they start to treat you like the guy at the office party who got too drunk and stuck his bare ass in the punch bowl. They’re too embarrassed to look you in the eye, let alone hang out with you.
“Hey, do you guys want to come over and watch the Eagles game? I made a quiche!”
“Wow, um, we’d really like to, Jeff, but we have to, um, take our ... grandpas, to the ... uh ... urologist.”
“You all have to take your grandpas to the urologist?”
“... Yes.”
“On a Sunday?”
“Yep. But thanks for the invite gottagobye!” Click.
But I take comfort in the fact that I am not the only sports dud out there. There are plenty of other sports-fan impostors trying desperately to hide their dark secret from their friends. Come to me, bookworms and science nerds, I am here to help.
I give you The Football Hater’s Guide to Survival.
The following scenarios will help football flunkies survive the season with their dignity intact.
Your sports friend says: “The Steelers are looking really good this season.”
Bad response: “Yeah, they’ve got the prettiest uniforms in the NBA.”
Good response: “Pass the nachos.”
Your friend: “Who do you think is the best Dolphin of all time?”
Bad response: “Flipper?”
Good response: “Pass the nachos.”
Your friend: “My favorite player is Chris Fuamatu-Ma’afala.”
Bad response: “Gesundheit.”
Good response: “Bless you.”
Your friend: “Pass the nachos.”
Bad response: “Gesundheit.”
Good response: “Here, have some nachos.”
Your friend: “If Kurt Warner drops back into shotgun, you can be sure the Eagles will blitz.”
Bad response: “Which team do the old guys in the black and white stripes play for?”
Good response: “There’s a spider on your shirt!”
Your friend: “Buuuuurp.”
Bad response: “Burp.”
Good response: “Buuuuuuuuuuuuurp.”
Your friend: “Nice hooters on that cheerleader.”
Bad response: “C’mon, man, respect her for her mind.”
Good response: “Yowza!”
These responses should prepare you for just about any situation that comes up during a football game. If you think one of your friends suspects something, throw your tutu over his head to distract him and run like hell.
That’s about all the football wisdom I have to bestow. Now all you have to do is train yourself to eat bratwurst, pork rinds, burritos, and sauerkraut without your stomach exploding. Good luck.
He had a sinister look on his face that said, “I’ve got something in store for you, my young minion. Plus, I just caught you playing Minesweeper.”
After letting me panic for a few moments, he pronounced my fate. “You’re going to the Poison, Warrant, and Quiet Riot concert tonight. Take your wife. Write an article.”
Oh boy, an ’80s metal concert! Great! And then we can go superglue our asses to a beehive.
I was less than thrilled. I had promised my wife a romantic evening out on the town, and my plans didn’t really involve sweaty glam rockers living out their mid-life crises in a pair of chafing leather pants. “Yeah, um, slight change of plans, honey. We kind of have to cancel our dinner reservations, and I pawned off our theater tickets. But on a positive note, C.C. DeVille might sweat on us!”
Sure, there are jobs out there with much bigger drawbacks than mine. I could be the intern in charge of changing Strom Thurmond’s diapers, for example. Or I could be the “back and ass” guy at an electrolysis shop.
Or I could be the guy who cleans out the elephant cages at the circus. Legend has it, someone actually died two years ago when a constipated elephant suddenly “let loose,” so to speak, right on top of him. After being knocked unconscious to the ground, the poor man suffocated under 200 pounds of ill-timed pachyderm poop. What are the odds?
I personally have never been blasted by a constipated elephant at work, so that’s one perk about my job. But at the time it was small consolation for being shipped down a one-way street to Metalsville. I mean, I’m proud to be the resident music junkie, but – no offense to all the ’80s warriors out there – these bands aren’t exactly the cutting edge of rock and roll anymore. Quiet Riot hasn’t hit No. 1 since 1983. I was 7.
But I have to admit, I did have kind of a morbid fascination with what the crowd would be like. I imagined an ocean of mullets, a forest of stone-washed jeans, a field of high-top sneakers. Do they still peg their pants? Do they wear Swatches instead of watches? Do the men prefer to perm their hair, or just feather it back? I had to know.
It would make for a great story to say that I was way off with my stereotype of ’80s metal fans. But no, I pretty much nailed it. There were frayed jean shorts, nipple-bearing mesh shirts, assorted leather accessories, and plenty of half-shirts that were probably more flattering 20 years ago when they weren’t hanging over a poochy gut.
What I was wrong about, however, was how much fun I would have. And not at other people’s expense, either. Poison, Warrant, and Quiet Riot all put on a genuinely good rock show. It took some time, but eventually I was able to wipe the smirk off my face and buy into the glitz and glamour of a decidedly over-the-top stage show. There were pyrotechnics, laser shows, a rockin’ sound system, Bret Michaels in a blazing white fur coat, and plenty of hit songs from all three bands that I had nearly forgotten all about: “Cum On Feel the Noize,” “Cherry Pie,” “Talk Dirty to Me,” ad infinitum.
As for the bands’ newer material, well, um (cough) it was (ahem) maybe not the most artistically credible music I’ve come across. (“Come on, everybody. Rock the house. Slam it ’til we all freak out,” implores Quiet Riot.) But for what it’s worth, all three bands are still making original, straight-forward stadium rock without selling out. After being subjected to eight straight hours of Top-40 radio at work, I found it kind of refreshing. I mean, really, someone’s got to keep rock and roll alive, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be Creed. “My sacrifice” is listening to their latest single 10 times a day.
What does the future hold for ’80s rockers? Well, I’ve been hearing a new Hall & Oates song on the radio lately, so I guess anything’s possible. And, while their approach is definitely more tongue-and-cheek, a pocket of new bands like The Strokes, The Hives, and The White Stripes have sparked a revival of the straight-forward garage rock that yielded to ’80s metal so many years ago. As Quiet Riot’s Kevin DuBrow said to me last year, “That’s just the nature of music. It goes in cycles.”
So does journalism – it’s one year later, and here’s my article, just in time for Poison’s next tour through Central Pa.
I work hard to be a good husband. I try to be sensitive. I open my wife’s car door for her. I take her to see girly movies (I am the guy who saw the “Bridget Jones Diary”). When she’s not around, I page through her Victoria’s Secret catalogues so that I can understand her better. I have driven to Rite-Aid by myself through the blinding snow to buy nothing but tampons. I sacrifice. And then my wife has to go and shake our relationship at its very foundation by uttering the seven words dreaded most by heterosexual men everywhere: “Why don’t you ever take me dancing?”
Dancing? Gee, I don’t know ... Why don’t I ever lace our food with laxatives, or hide scorpions in our bed, or switch our toothpaste with axle grease? Yet she persists, because she, like all women, sometimes “just has to dance.”
“Oh, I had such a bad day, I just have to dance.” Or conversely, “I had such a great day, I just have to dance.” Or even, “Today was so on-the-fence between a good day and a bad day, I just have to dance.”
Men never “just have to dance.” There is nothing inherent to being a man that makes you want to “shake your booty.” If I’m out having a beer with my buddy, and he grabs my hand and says, “They’re totally playing my song! Let’s dance!” he’s probably getting a punch in the face. My wife, on the other hand, can get away with dragging me onto the dance floor, because dancing is directly related to sex. As in, if I don’t do it, I won’t be doing it. Dancing is also related to sex in that it makes my wife feel sexy. I personally feel about as sexy on the dance floor as Strom Thurmond in a thong bikini. Yet, to my great chagrin, I continue to find myself plodding around under the disco ball like a giant Weeble that wobbles but never falls down. I flap around the floor, mashing toes, bruising ribs, leaving a trail of carnage and mumbled apologies.
“Oh, excuse me.”
“I’m sorry. Was that your foot?”
“Oops. That will probably wash out.”
“Oh geez. Let me buy you another one.”
“Ooh, sorry. Tilt your head back until the bleeding stops.”
As my wife glides about with her eyes closed and a peaceful smile on her lips, she is completely unaware that, as she blissfully twirls and pirouettes across the floor, an angry lynch mob is forming to drive her husband right the hell out of Dodge. Later, in the car, she will tilt the seat back just a hair, snuggle down into her jacket, and sigh, “That was wonderful.” I will look over as much as my neck brace allows and smile.
I will never like dancing, and I will never like the fact that my wife likes dancing. She has repeatedly brought up the notion of dance lessons, convinced that after a few rounds at Arthur Murray I will be a regular “Grease”-era John Travolta – a guy who’s singing, dancing, and flashing his jazz hands, but still able to get away with wearing a leather jacket. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I could be the Al Jolson of the 21st century, minus the blackface. But I really H-A-T-E dancing. I hate it with a fiery passion. Which is why I am now asking myself, “Dumbass, how did you get talked into signing up for dance lessons?” Because I love my wife. Because it’s almost Valentine’s Day. Because just when I think that my wife and I couldn’t be a more mismatched pair, she fixes everything by uttering the seven sweet words that melt my heart like butter: “Let’s go out for wings and beer.”
