We used to be the wedding dancers people talked about for all the right reasons. Then we took Argentinian tango lessons.

So Alex and I are taking Argentinian tango lessons.

When Alexandra told her dance teacher, she said, “That’s wonderful! They’ll have to come in and show us what they’ve learned.”

When she told her Spanish teacher, she said, “Why would they start with the hardest dance of all?”

Now we’re talking.

The first night, my body refused to do the dance on the right-hand side. The left side got it—graceful, balanced, smug even. But the right side? Total rebellion.

Then came circles. No more stepping in a line. Within seconds we were dizzy, bumping into other couples, arguing about who was leading.

Alex kept saying, “Stop leading.”

I kept saying, “Stop pushing.” Then I’d quote the instructor: “You’re supposed to invite me, not push me. Invite me.”

Glad I’d had that six-ounce glass of rosé beforehand. Or maybe it loosened me up too much.

Our hands were sweating. I was supposed to put my hand behind his back, not on his shoulder. We never mastered even the basic step.

Every time we bumped into the pole, Alex would grin and say, “I’m half Pole.”
The teacher kept telling us to listen to the music, but we couldn’t hear it.

So I started counting—one, two, three—and for a minute I was doing better…until the teacher came over and I got so flustered I crossed my foot over the wrong one and nearly tripped.

Alex said, “Why do we have to do that anyway?”
I said, “I guess to look good.”
Only we weren’t looking good at all.

By then we didn’t need to laugh anymore—or draw any more attention to ourselves. Somehow, we’d managed to claim an entire quarter of the room. We’d inadvertently kicked all the serious dancers to the other side.

We were the most ridiculous version of ourselves we could possibly be—two overgrown beginners who thought tango would be fun.

But we had to buy a class card for $150, so I guess we have to go back.

And then we started laughing—the kind of unstoppable laughter that makes no sense once it’s over. Afterwards, you can’t even remember what was so funny.

We may never master the tango, but we’ve officially invented a new style: belly laugh dancing. It only took us twenty-seven years of marriage to come up with it.

It’s really not that funny in retrospect.

We were the wedding dancers people still talk about—our three-part medley and the dip!—and now they’ll be talking about us again, but definitely in the opposite way.

But maybe that’s the point. This little romp through tango—and what feels a lot like Romper Room—reminds us that the real gold isn’t in mastering the step (though we’re still practicing through all the stepping on toes that might pursue).

Let’s stay as fun-loving as those newlyweds we once were—the perfect commercial for Sure deodorant.

Because even if life sometimes plays out more like a Depends ad, we still get to choose the story we’re in.

At least this time, we remembered Pierre’s rule from our wedding dance: No banana hands.
Take that, you intermediate-beginner dancers.