Essay Winner...YAY!

Congrats to my husband, Greg, for winning the "I Love Arthur Murray" essay contest. He won a FREE lesson...woohoo!!! His essay is below. I'll eventually get around to posting my essay but for now I wanted to showcase the winner. The layout featured is using Moxxie products, from their new "Dance" line, that works perfectly for our new activity that we both enjoy doing together. Here is Greg's essay:

It is all so familiar. The tapping of the foot to the music. The sound of rapid foot movement across the hardwood floor. The twisting. The arms moving. The body totally in synch with the beat. The music is a variety of genres, yet no matter the era, the movements are part of who she is and the smile on her face tells me so. SHE LOVES TO DANCE!!!! She’s always been this way. I hear it goes back to her white “go-go” boots tapping out a watusi on the old well pit when she wasn’t far from diapers. Be it a wedding reception, a Christmas Party, class reunion, or any social function, she is always one of the first to the floor. I will catch up in few dances.

The idea first occurred to me while on a cruise in the Caribbean a few years ago. There were several couples that had clearly had some sort of formal training waltzing and doing something that I would years later learn was called a “cha cha”. The idea remained suppressed behind all of my other fears until her company Christmas party in 2007. The CEO of her company took to the floor and danced with his daughter-in-law. SHE watched. The look in her eyes as they danced, told me what my anniversary present to her was going to be.
Now.......where does one learn such movements?
And……how was I going to get the CEO to take lessons with her?

The following week lead me to the internet and ultimately to the Arthur Murray studio on East State Boulevard. It was Mr. Baeten that made the sale final when he promised to keep extra right feet in the back to go with my two lefts. If I was going to do this, it was clear that the instructor was going to need a sense of humor. I left with a classy brochure in hand and a sense that I may have found the perfect gift for the person that has always been the perfect gift for me. What I did not have was my credit card! There was something prophetic in that, I guess.

The initial lesson was somewhat intimidating for me. This is not something I do naturally but the six lessons would surely make me into a dancer, just like the ones on the ship a few years earlier. So I stuck it out and hoped to get one of those extra rights that Mr. Baeten had promised me. During those first lessons, I was amazed by the grace and abilities of the more seasoned dancers. Clearly, they were on lesson five or six.

What amazed me more; however, were the helpfulness, the thoughtfulness, and mostly the forgiveness, of the people in the studio. The Arthur Murray instructors, Ms. Schuldt and Mr. Lothamer make the process fun and challenging and I’m relieved each morning to check my pillow after a lesson with Mr. Baeten or Ms. Rosas. No…my brain did not explode!

It’s the friendships that I love more than anything though. First and foremost, the girl with the “go-go” boots that inspired me to be here and the people that we’ve met, the ones that share the tapping of the foot to the music. The sound of rapid foot movement across the hardwood floor. The twisting. The arms moving. The body totally in synch with the beat. I think I’ll stay on this ship! (After reviewing the tape, the people on the ship must have stopped at lesson 6, because they weren’t as good as I initially thought)