Swing Dancing on Tuesdays

I'm twenty-nine, and in the spring, my coworker took me to a swing dancing night at a historic ballroom downtown. A live big band played on a stage with a red curtain. Couples whirled around the wooden floor in a blur of skirts and suspenders.

I was terrified. I don't dance. But the rule at swing night is that anyone can ask anyone, and nobody says no. Within five minutes, a man in his seventies, wearing a bow tie, asked me to dance.

He taught me the basic step: rock step, triple step, triple step. He spun me so gently I barely noticed. "You're a natural," he said. I was not. But I believed him.

Now I go every Tuesday night. I've danced with college students, grandmothers, a firefighter and a nine-year-old girl who was better than everyone. The man in the bow tie still dances with me every week. His name is Leonard. He's been coming since 1968. He says swing dancing is the secret to a long life. I'm starting to think he's right.