I have no idea what astronomer Robert Benchley references at the start of this week’s chapter, Let’s Not Dance This! But science popularizers have been making metaphors of stuff forever, and it’s natural to take the metaphor literally.

This essay isn’t quite in line with the modern “Introvert Pride” humor style, the one about how the best way to invite an introvert to a party is to cancel it for them. But it’s not far off. It’s also not far off complaints about how mathematics or phys ed or English classes make students hate mathematics or physical fitness or reading.

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Somehow I do not thrill to the idea that “every form of life is dancing to celestial music,” as a well-known but giddy-minded astronomer has stated. Aside from presenting a rather ludicrous picture, it is too tiring to think of. I don’t like to dance, and I won’t dance, celestial music or no celestial music!

It seems as if a greater part of my life has been spent in avoiding dancing. When I was little I used to feign measles and fallen arches on Saturday afternoons when the dreaded time came to put the patent leather pumps into the green baize bag and toddle off to dancing school. I had some pretty clever ruses up my sleeve, but there is no record of their ever having worked.

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Incidentally, I believe that the barbarous custom which prevailed at the turn of the century of forcing boys into Saturday afternoon dancing school was responsible for the middle-aged generation of terpsichore-haters whom we see cowering in corners or hitching heavily around dance floors today.

After a Saturday morning of rolling around in the dirt and skinning knee-caps, what red blooded man of eight or nine would not rebel at being called in, given a hot bath in the middle of the day and crowded into a black suit, merely to spend a sunny afternoon indoors with a bunch of girls in blue sashes? It’s a wonder that any of us even got married.

Once herded into the torture hall, however, we had ways and means of avoiding the ultimate degradation of actually dancing. Determined groups of stags would barricade themselves in the boys’ dressing room and defy adult pleadings until it became a case for calling out the militia. And, even when dragged out into action, there were subtle forms of sabotage such as losing a pump or lacerating the insteps of our partners, which soon broke down the opposition and sent us back to the lockers in triumph.

Following the dancing-school period came the parties where someone, after supper, was always rolling back the rugs and turning on the gramophone. The minute I saw a rug being so much as turned up at one corner I was out on the porch like a wild, hunted thing, even though it was the dead of Winter, and many a night I have stood jammed against a waterspout in the dark while searching parties brushed by me with bloodhounds.

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It wasn’t so much that they wanted me to dance as it was their vicious determination that, at a party, nobody shall ever be let off anything. There is no one so unfeeling as a hostess who is set on having the young folks enjoy themselves.

With the years has come that sweet respite from regimentation in matters of merrymaking, and I can now say quite frankly, “Go away, Twinkletoes, and keep away! Grandpa’s sitting right here!” Or, better yet, I can get up and give them a taste of their own medicine for one lap around the floor, after which any alternative that I suggest is greeted with a grateful look and limping acquiescence. But my first instinct is still to rush to the boys’ room when I hear the music start.

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So, when astronomers tell us that every form of life is dancing to celestial music and that the earth and the sun set up a rhythm which we cannot escape I settle back in my chair with a confident smile and order scrambled eggs and bacon.

“You go ahead and dance to the celestial music,” I say to my group. “I have escaped stronger forces than the earth and the sun in my day. I have braved the thin red line of disapproving mothers seated along the wall at dancing school. I have eluded the most eagle-eyed of hostesses at young people’s parties. I have definitely established myself as a non-dancer in some of the dancingest circles of my day. The only time that any celestial influence gets me on my feet will be when it swoops me up for good.”