Dancing in the Living Room

Dancing in the living room. When we lived in Florida one of my favorite things to do was dance in the living room. Our living room was one of the few carpeted rooms in our home and it was sunken as it had a step down from the dining room. There was a rod iron railing that divided the two rooms. Not only did I love to dance in this room, this was where I would secretly take my baby brother to teach him to walk. Apparently, I wanted credit for this event. I spent many hours listening and dancing to Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass. The album belonged to my parents and displayed a young woman covered in nothing but whipped cream. Although, I had never taken any formal lessons I enjoyed flinging myself around the room, leaping with my arms flung out. It was some time during this period I asked my parents if I could take tap dancing lessons at the local dance studio. Once a week I would ride my bike up to The Royal School of Ballet for my lesson and learn all about shuffle, ball change, step. We would also spend some time doing some sort of tumbling, which I remember not being very good at. However, I enjoyed learning how to tap dance and took great pleasure in the sound of my tap shoes hitting the floor. I ended the season with a dance recital that my father and sister attended. It did seem a little odd years later when I looked back on it that my mother had not attended. This was the one and only time that I took formal dance lessons of any kind. However, in Jr. High and High School I was a member of the drill team.