[dropcap]O[/dropcap]utside the seafood shack, I waited with my hands crammed in my pockets, while the children turned cartwheels around me, singing in their high-pitched voices.
One of the children came up to me and asked if I’d like to join them in their delightful game of acrobatics. At first I declined, but after the child’s forty-seventh request on the matter I conceded to try my hand at a trick or two. It was at this point that my wife, Jamie, wandered away from me and quit answering to her own name.
What the children didn’t know, is that I had been groomed as a dancer —meaning, I used to do the worm at parties, usually toward the end of the night. And, while it was true that I had not attempted such a dance in seventeen years, I failed to see how that mattered much.
I assumed the familiar launch position, and the children went crazy.
A few moments later, I woke up with a sore jaw, and a crowd of people around me, who all applauded when I flashed a thumbs-up from where I laid on the pavement.