A Sonoran Saturday Night - Jan Carrie Steven

It’s weird!

I didn’t even know it had happened until I said to Laurence, “It’s so nice to be able to visit Texas again” — as if Texas was a neighbouring province.

I currently see Green Valley, Arizona as our hometown, and the Green Valley RV Park as our neighbourhood.

In fact, as we approached the Texas border, listening to our Marty Robbins CD for a second time, we were grinning ear to ear as he sang about how happy he would be on returning to “The Little Green Valley.”

We thoroughly enjoy our life at 43 Rattlesnake Lane in our Fifth Wheel. On a recent Saturday night, Laurence and I tried out a new activity here — the Saturday Night Dance. I did not know a Seniors Dance could be so much fun and exercise.

I have to confess to some initial agism; I wondered what kind of live band would want to play for a 55+ crowd.

Silly me.

The activities committee had booked The RealTones from Mesa, Arizona, and they were AMAZING and love coming here. They have a huge repertoire, but this evening they limited themselves to '50s and '60s music. Tammy, the lead gal singer, sang “Crazy” by Patsy Cline (my request) and she NAILED it.

It’s the best version I’ve heard post-Patsy.

I also wondered if we’d have anything to talk about with our table-mates. We didn’t know them. But one of the nice things about chatting with seniors, especially those born in the '20s, '30s, and '40s is that they have lived the life and then some.

The lad sitting beside Laurence was in the U.S. Navy and has a continuing interest in South and North Korea. And his wife and he are very involved with their home church in Illinois and it happens to be the same denomination as my church.

Laurence started to shake his head in frustration at one point.

“Here we are at a dance and you’re talking about Communion!”

The next question I had was “Will anyone besides us want to dance?”

I needn’t have worried — for two and a half hours (with one wee break) the RealTones played all the favourites and the dance floor was packed and whooping and rockin’.

It was grand listening to elderly folks reminiscing about their love affairs in their teens and 20s and realize that the “hottie” they were describing was the person sitting or dancing beside them, the person they’d been married to for the last 50 or 60 years.

Why do we (me included) want to make seniors into plush toys that are sedentary, have nothing to say, and are “cute.”

There was such a variety of music — including the Beer Barrel polka.

For those of you who aren’t in “the know,” this is a song that never ends.

The floor started out full, and gradually folks started giving out around the three-minute mark. At least, that’s when Laur and I tuckered out.

One couple — proudly Polish — were the last couple standing after at least five minutes.

There are always people who don’t like to dance, and they are usually men. No worries, Green Valley RV Park has an army of line-dancing women, and every few songs, the RealTones would be sure to play a song where the line dancers could strut and shuffle their stuff. (Laur tried line dancing for five minutes at the beginners class before his eyes started to cross. He calls it algebra for feet).

But the Belle of the Ball was and is Lola.

Lola participates in pretty much everything that happens in the park, including all the exercise classes, and there are many of them — including Zumba Gold. And she danced up a storm with the RealTones.

And by the way, she is 95 years old.

To put that in perspective for me — she was almost 40 when I was born, and I’m considered a senior at 56.

At the end of the dance, I went up and thanked the RealTones for a wonderful evening and one of the lads who was about 35 said, “We enjoy watching you folks dance. It gives us hope.”

Initially, I felt a little twinge when he said that because when Laur and I are bebopping around the dance floor, we feel like teenagers. I guess we’ll have to take a page, or maybe just a sentence or two, from Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s Memories of My Melancholy Whores...

“The truth is I'm getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.”

Or we could just forget where we put our glasses.