Lesson 1: The Competition

I arrive early, but I avoid changing into my tap shoes until the last minute. They scare me.

Once I get them on, they feel foreign. The large toe tap extends almost to the ball of my foot, and the smooth metal slips on the carpet. People dance in these? On hardwood?

As other students arrive, I size up the competition. Then I notice my train of thought, and laugh: the "competition." How instinctively male to assume the other students are here to contest me. Most little boys arrive in the world hardwired for rivalry. Often, when my kids were still in elementary school, I'd be cruising down the multilane interstate highway, lost in thought, when my son would pipe from the back seat, "Let's beat that guy, Dad!" And I'd know what he meant. Through the random patterns of traffic, another motorist had happened to pull alongside me in the next lane. My son would urge, "We can take him!" I had the same instinct. But who said there was a race? Where was the finish line? Answer: most guys know there's a race without being told, and the finish line is called death.

Mentally, I readjusted. This is not a competition. It's just a healthy, fun, collegial learning experience. There is no need to compare one person's skill with another's. Yeah, right.

So we gather for our first class of the season, clicking and clacking gingerly on the hardwood floor, half apologetic for the noises our feet make. A few people arrived early enough for me to speak briefly with them:

• A pert brunette, her straight hair cut in a professional bob. She can't be any taller than five feet two inches. She looks thirty-something and though she is friendly, she also has a focused, business-like air about her. She introduces herself as Joan.

• A beautiful woman, apparently fifty, with stylish short hair, a slender frame, and large, expressive eyes. I sense in her some of the wariness I also feel about prancing around with strangers. Her name is Valerie.

• A beaming girl wearing long straight hair and an athletic sweatshirt from her college. I don't catch her name, but compared to us older working professionals, she brightens the room with her energy, openness, and her ready laugh.

More students signed up and are expected, but attendance at any adult night class tends toward the sporadic. This is pretty much our complement for tonight. I am the only male, which makes me feel even more out of place.

Curly-haired Annette has us spread out against one wall of the studio while facing the opposite wall. I have my first encounter with the mirror. I wore a light-colored T-shirt that I wouldn't mind sweating in. I left it untucked, thinking that would hide my belly. In the mirror, it spreads like a maternity smock, straining at the crest of my gut. Good Lord, I look like I'm pregnant.

Moments later, I wrench myself out of a reverie of self-loathing, realizing Annette has begun. She is demonstrating a basic Shuffle. Her right foot makes an easy little swing, out and back, and stops where it started. On the way out her toe taps the floor once. It does the same thing on the way back. Tap, tap. It looks ridiculously easy.

Now it's our turn. Annette pushes a button on a CD player, and a jazz trio tosses out an easy, soulful mid-tempo groove. Ella Fitzgerald begins singing about Hard-hearted Hannah, the Vamp of Savannah. Tasty. "Okay, eight Shuffles," Annette calls. "Five, six, seven, AND!"

Our diverse feet shoot out and back at various approximations of rhythm. The Shuffle itself is a piece of cake, but to my consternation, I discover that I am the world's most overfed flamingo. I can't balance on one foot. I'm wavering like crazy and feel like I might fall over. When I was an active young man, I was skinny. My memories of how my body works, and the laws of physics governing mass in motion, are in contradiction.

The other students have their hands on their hips, imitating Annette's stance. I force my arms straight down. I am afraid if I lift them, my center of gravity will raise just that extra inch that sends me crashing over. I feel like I'm careening from side to side, waving my arms in crazy windmills just to stay upright, but when I risk a glance at the guy in the mirror, he looks like everybody else, except sadder.

"Okay!" Annette calls over the music. "Same thing, left side!"

We switch feet. My weight swings to the right so I can lift my left foot, and now I really feel I'm going over. I am a bowl of jello, balanced on one stilt and thrown into motion. I miss three Shuffles, just trying to find some stability. Holy cow, it's the first exercise of the first class, and it's this hard? I seize upon my new mantra: It's not a competition. It's not a competition.

"Back to the right!" Annette calls. Curse you, foul tormentor! More careening and windmilling. Fortunately for me, not everyone follows along; the tapping sounds less like accompaniment to music, and more like the patter of applause. Annette hurries over to the CD player and turns it off so she can do some explaining.

It turns out that was just a Forward Shuffle. We learn a Side Shuffle, then a Back Shuffle. We learn what a Flap is. We learn what a Step is. Gradually I'm getting the hang of it. I was standing with my toes straight forward, like a soldier. Annette explains "turn out," which in my case means I get to angle my toes out like a duck. That gives me more leverage for balancing when we switch from side to side, though it still seems a precarious business.

Frankly, I expected a certain amount of misery when I chose to begin this endeavor. I didn't really expect what came next.

Brooklyn Funk Essentials is playing "The Creator Has a Master Plan," a jazz joint that begins with ethereal string washes but soon evolves into a conga-flavored blend of calypso, dub, and harmonious horns. We are doing three Shuffles and a Step on each side: tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, plomp. Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, plomp. Out and in, back and forth. And for whatever reason, for one minute, all of us beginners synchronize. The whole class is right in the pocket: on beat with the music, matched with each other, glued to the rhythm.

I had forgotten this was the goal. I had forgotten this was even possible. For a minute, it's not about me and my bowl full of jelly. For a minute, none of us have day jobs or families or worries. We're caught up in something timeless and greater than ourselves. We are matched cogs in the master plan.

The song ends. We turn to one another, looking flushed and pleased, complimenting one another and delighted with ourselves as a group. If we weren't all strangers, we might high five each other or hug.

It only lasted a minute, and we were doing the simplest beats imaginable, but it feels as if we perfectly reenacted the "Thriller" video. Screw competition. This is way cooler. ##