Dancing under a mushroom cloud

One evening in late October 1962, my father was driving me to a ballroom dancing lesson. I was an awkward 14-year-old, very shy, and a horrible dancer to boot. I dreaded these lessons. Foxtrot was the least painful for me since it was pretty easy to slur my steps and keep from hitting my partner’s shoes. And waltz wasn’t too bad since most of the time I could actually hear the ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three beat, and launch my feet in sweeping Ls accordingly. Cha-cha was way too intricate, and tango was simply out of the question.

We were in our tiny Fiat 600, well before the days of seatbelts and air bags. The radio was on high volume, competing for audibility with the various rattles of the car. The news announcer was reporting on the increasingly tense showdown between Kennedy and Khrushchev over the Russian missiles in Cuba. The US had set up a blockade to intercept all ships heading toward Cuba. The Russians said they would ignore the blockade, and threatened war. A showdown seemed imminent. My father was completely silent, eyes fixed on the road ahead. When we arrived, I said goodbye with uncharacteristic emotion. I thought I might never see him again.

The dance lessons were conducted in the basement of the house of a matronly woman whose name I forgot half a century ago. The floor was dark linoleum, and I think the walls were cinderblock painted white. Other than the staircase that went down from ground level, the only connection to the outside world was a narrow, horizontal rectangular window high up on the wall. The music came from a little record player sitting on a cabinet.

The class consisted of about 6 boys and 6 girls, some nearly as nerdy as me. The instructor paired us off into uncomfortable couples, and we waited for the scratchy record to begin. I was horribly self-conscious on the best nights, and this wasn’t one of the best. It was hard to concentrate, even on the Foxtrot. I kept glancing up at the rectangular window, expecting at any moment to see a bright orange flash.

In school we’d been regularly drilled in what to do when the air raid alarm sounded. If we were in a classroom we were to dive under our little desks and curl up in a protective ball, hands over the backs of our necks, eyes closed. If we happened to be changing classes, we were supposed to drop where we were and lie prone on the floor, our heads against the base of the lockers and our feet sticking out into the hallway. Since the dance studio had neither desks nor lockers, I had no idea what I was supposed to do when we heard the sirens.

Somehow the molasses-infused time passed, no sirens rose above the music, nothing flashed, and the lesson was over. We all emerged from the potential basement tomb and silently dispersed to the cars of our waiting parents. I don’t remember the radio being on on the drive home—perhaps the crisis was over. Or maybe it had become even worse. Ultimately, of course, Khrushchev backed down, the missiles left Cuba and we were once again safe from imminent annihilation. But somehow, ever since, I’ve never enjoyed dancing.