Friday, 24 October 2008

• How Mrs. Hum Got Her Groove On, Part One: The First Dance

  Okay, I'm telling you all now, you're in for a few dancing posts and it ain't necessarily going to be pretty. I am a gawky white girl who doesn't really tan, so much of my dancing involves the flailing of blindingly white limbs and the shaking of a ridiculously flat ass. So, with that in mind, I'm going to take it slow and expose you to my pale spasticness gradually, in the hope that, by the time we reach true busting-a-move territory, we can all get through it on a full stomach. Okay? Okay!
  

  
  

   

  
  Our first dancing entry involves Mr. Hum and I taking to the dancefloor for the first time as man and wife. As I mentioned way back in my blogging tenure, I am not a dancer. I took ballet as a kid and then quit because there is only so much humiliation a girl can take. Approaching the wedding, I had talked to Mr. Hum about taking dance lessons and in a moment of ultimate weakness, he agreed to, but as is the case with weddings a lot of the time, we just never got around to it.
  
  

    
  

  
  So, instead, we winged it (hahaha bird pun) and it actually turned out okay . . . 
  In terms of the song we picked, there was much debate over this, but we finally settled on "Falling Slowly" by The Swell Season from the movie Once.  It didn't have any secret special meaning to us, but we picked it because it contained a boat reference* and because it was pretty and short enough to dance through. Although, looking back now, I am not really sure what we did could qualify as dancing since we spent most of the time just kissing and circling dizzily around the dancefloor.
  
  

   
  
  

  I know it'll sound cheesy, but from the inside, it felt like floating. It was charged with this really intense emotion, very much like the kind you get when you start dating. Your hands touch for the first time and everything feels blurry and warm and electrified because you can't believe you're lucky enough to have made your way through the billions of people in this world to find this specific person. This someone who gets you and loves you. With all your nerves. With all your flaws. Without logic. Without question.
  

  
  
  

  
  I'm not a believer in soul mates because I don't feel like the world works in absolutes like that. I think love is about timing. If I had met Mr. Hum a year before I did, it might not have worked out because we were both very different people who were involved with very different people. But things changed, we changed, and when our paths crossed, we were both open to what the other had to offer. We were ready to keep in time with each other. Like music. Like dancing.
  
  

   
  

  
  People have talked to us about our first dance since the wedding. Over dinner one night a little while ago, a friend of ours commented that, watching us dance, she didn't know whether to cry, turn away or have an orgasm because it felt so intimate. I'm sure it's a weird thing to say, but the more I think about it, the more I think that's kind of the cool thing about having a wedding. It's a chance to crack open your relationship and share a bit the intimacy you share with your partner with everyone else you know. It's a day that is public, however it's still kind of private because no matter how many people are there, you're only making promises to one other person. You're vowing to be with them for a lifetime and although everyone else can hear it and see it, only you know what that means. Because you're the one who knows all the jokes, all the secrets, all the steps and all the $h!t it took to get there.
  
  

  
  

  
  God knows, as a woman with a video game themed wedding, I am not an advocate for doing things the traditional way, but if you have the chance, I highly recommend doing a first dance. Even if, like us, it's not really dancing. Because you can't beat the high.
  
  * The boat thing is an inside joke we have that I'm not going to share here, but regardless when the line in the song came up, both Mr. Hum and I cracked up.
  
  

  
  

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