My quiet existence has undergone a bit of shaking up in the last week. Suddenly new friends are positively exploding out of the woodwork. Here’s this next week’s social schedule:

• Monday: cooking dinner for co-worker
• Tuesday: possibly hanging out with colleagues after work
• Wednesday: nothing, but that’s because it’s my weekly night shift
• Thursday: dinner with another co-worker
• Friday: Swing dancing, possibly with two of my newest friends (new colleague, B., from work and somebody I met at last night’s dance)
• Saturday: coffee with another colleague
• Sunday: hiking and dinner with two new friends (they don’t work with me, but one of them is in the same line of work as I am)

I don’t even recognize my own life!

This last weekend was the beginning of all this craziness. I went straight from a birthday party to B.’s house so that he could take me swing dancing. ……

…The night started of in the most unpromising manner. I was a little late, which I hate hate hate, but he seemed unperturbed and soon we were walking out to the garage. Then he explained that if my door of the car was a little wet it was because he’d been cleaning it of mouse poop. Then after nicking the garage on on his way out, we were on our way and making uncomfortable small talk while driving up to the dance … for an hour. I’m decidedly not good at small talk. I believe I sounded more like a 13-year-old nitwit than anything else. I didn’t even know the answers to any of his questions about my family, which felt odd seeing as I’ve always thought that of all things, I know my family. Ah well… such is life. Or at least, such is my life.

Our first dance of the evening was similarly ill-fated. In fact, I ended up splayed on the floor at one point, right in front of the band and three or four hundred other dancers and spectators. (Luckily, I was entirely unhurt.) I felt stupid for letting my feet slip out from under me, and he felt bad for letting me fall.

But soon things started turning around. He’s a fabulous dancer and leads so well that I found myself doing moves I’ve never practiced before. Granted, he wasn’t doing anything really hard with me, he saved that for when he was dancing with the people who were actually accomplished dancers. Still, it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. He never ran me into other couples (which was a minor miracle since there was hardly room to breathe on the crowded dance floor). And did I mention he leads better than anyone I’ve ever danced with before in my life? A guy like that can make any girl look like an accomplished dancer.

In fact, because I was first seen dancing with him, other guys who knew their way around the dance floor began asking me to dance with them. In the past I’ve danced primarily with the beginner guys because none of the other dancers realized from these first, awkward, a-rhythmic gyrations that I might be fun to dance with. This time, everything was different. After our first few dances together I had such a string of decent partners that by the end of the night I’d learned dozens of new steps and gained enough confidence to actually show how much fun I was having.

Granted, it wasn’t all a bed of roses. There was one twerp who kept trying to dance with me and flirt with me, but managed to insult me pretty much continuously. Not only that, but he kept explaining how I could improve my dancing even as he flung me into people and never seemed to realize that he could, with any skill at all, have prevented these collisions. I couldn’t figure out what moves he wanted because he couldn’t lead. He also had no rhythm. But he was pretty sure he was the Lord of the Dance. Note to Twerp: Asking if a girl is in her “mid- to upper-twenties” and then saying “Because I’m not up that high yet” is not actually very flirty or charming. (Oh, and he looked exactly like Tom Cruise, which is not calculated to inspire love in those of us over the age of 21.)

But after doing time with such upstarts, I’d get to go back B. and be swept around in a style to which I could easily become accustomed. He sure does know how to make a girl feel like a princess. He even opened my car door at the end of the night. What a gentleman.