(never as in the photograph — usually on my own)

Bad Love by Eric Clapton is one of those songs that gets to me, like Santana’s The Calling … oof, it’s like, like … something really, really good. Music moves me, some songs a lot more than others, and with those, I am literally unable to not move (perhaps I would be able to if super-pressed, but to this day, no). Why I danced on a bar.

On my way home from an errand this morning, Clapton’s song came on, and I had no choice but to turn up the volume and move. And replay it and do it all over again. It’s what happens. Most of the time, it’s three times. Spoon by Dave Matthews Band does the same at one point, although with a different vibe. And Right Down The Line? Och! As the Scots say. The music just lifts me from wherever I may be. All good music does that to me.

To boot, back to Clapton, I saw him in concert for the Journeyman tour, and I am so certain of this: we connected. I could not sit, and even though no one else at all in the section where I sat danced or was even standing, I did — for the entire song. He smiled. It is a favorite moment of mine.

ok, then, about dancing on a bar …

Grammar software keeps trying to correct on a bar to in a bar. Singing with mariachis and smoking with strangers (I am not, and have never been, a smoker) doesn’t even come close to dancing on the bar at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge in Nashville on a business trip — on a new career path for me (the work, not the dancing =). For some reason, it was something I had always wanted to do. Never in a million years would I have thought a) that the opportunity would present itself, b) that I would actually do it if it presented itself. Yes to both.

so when someone called over the music and din

for all the Honky Tonk Women to get on the bar, I stopped breathing. Women rushed to the bar as Honkey Tonk Women began to play. I looked at the others with me for the three-day meeting, at my manager, some big wigs (what-the-heck-is-that???). Thought for 1½ seconds, most likely less, then put my drink on the table and, barely glancing at my manager, said, “Sorry, I gotta do this.” As I neared the bar, hands helped me up, and I danced to the Rolling Stones plus one other song. Two of us kept it going. C-R-A-Z-Y. But it was so fun.

i do not check boxes,

but if I did, that would have been one. Have always disliked the term or thought, and dislike even less: “bucket list.” Ugh!