I was eighteen years old. My social dancing experience up to that point was limited to

• the Egyptian (second grade)
• clogging (third grade)
• square dancing (fifth grade)
• the running man, kid ‘n play, the Robocop, the Roger Rabbit, and the snake (sixth grade)
• the electric slide and the macarena (high school)

(Dubbing the last two as “social dancing” is overly generous.)

In the high school jazz band, I was required to wear a necktie that featured the keys of a piano to reflect the instrument I played, though I preferred to wear one that illustrated four different facial expressions of Mickey Mouse: laughing, smiling, frowning, and pondering. In boredom, the drummer and I would often annoy the band director by breaking out into songs like Beck’s “Where It’s At”. The director did not appreciate our abilities to spontaneously improvise and entertain.

It was in this jazz band that I first became acquainted with big band music. We bobbed through Mongo Santamaria’s “Watermelon Man”, leisurely strolled through “On the Sunny Side of the Street”, located the beat in Glenn Miller’s “(I’ve Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo”, and sang with our instruments in Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing (with a Swing)”.

An unknown band called Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was slated to perform in one of the auditoriums at UCLA. The Office of Residential Life informed the dormitory residents that FREE swing dancing lessons would be offered prior to their performance.

Never before had I thought that rock step, step, step, rock step could be so glorious! Social dancing suddenly took on new, heightened meaning. The arm-flapping, butt-shaking, shoulder-raising, and leg-kicking associated with club dancing now seemed uncoordinated and goofy. This, I decided, is dancing.

Thus began the era of two-toned shoes, downloading of big band music (under shady circumstances—certainly not on the sunny side of the street), trips to The Derby, and admiration of zoot suits.

We never learned how to lindy hop. We watched the lindy hoppers, all dressed up in period clothing, take command of the dance floor—”how do they do that?”—but we allowed our academic pursuits to interfere with our dancing development.

A variety of factors then terminated my engagement with swing dancing: Medical school. Lack of awareness of a local swing dancing scene. Absence of my dancing partner. Academic guilt. Shyness.

Years passed. Though unpracticed, I still knew how to rock step, step, step, rock step. The music in my soul (sole?), though quiet, had not completely faded.

Having successfully completed my internship, I suddenly realized that I did not have a life outside of work. After some internal waffling, I enrolled in lindy hop classes in an effort to extricate myself from the mire of medicine—

—and I was then kindly introduced to the fantastic world of step, step, triple step, step, step, triple step. Lindy hop, along with its great uncle, the Charleston, made me smile and laugh. It still does.

I still occasionally do The Sprinkler while lindy hopping, though. I’m not above looking uncoordinated and goofy.