This month, Mark uses upscale dining and down-home dancing to re-connect with his wife.
Sometimes, a relationship needs a little grounding. Lives get too busy and too self-absorbed to notice the needs of our better halves, much less satisfy them. One remedy is to step outside of the comfort zone and give your spouse a night geared just for them. I attempted just this for my cowgirl of a wife one Friday, on our latest date night.
The evening required us to both look classy and exude a Honkey Tonk appeal. After several wardrobe changes, we settled on the double denim look (both tops and bottoms). I was also sporting my long forgotten cowboy boots and my wife had on an old cowboy hat that was definitely from the country.
Looking good and feeling fine, we strapped up and headed off to Harpo’s Restaurant. We were after their thirty dollar prix fixe menu: advertised as affordable fine dining in Oshawa. My wife was a little concerned about our appearance in such an atmosphere, but I assured her that Harpo’s had to accept the consequences of riff raff like us being attracted to such affordable offerings. We entered the labyrinth of dining rooms and found a lovely table at the front of the restaurant with lots of stained glass windows that offered wonderful ambient lighting.
They say everything’s bigger in Texas, and this was also the case in Harpo’s from the biggest chandelier-to-room size ratio I’ve ever seen to a monolithic pepper grinder that threatened me at the beginning of every delicious course. One of the many highlights of the dinner was their flaming cheese dish called Saganaki–my wife loves pyro technics at dinner.
We would have preferred to have sat and relaxed among the neo-classic masterpieces that dotted the walls, but the Hoe Down beckoned us. We left our comfy seats to learn how to Line Dance on very full stomachs.
The Corral in Oshawa is a real diamond in the rough, with live bands, one dollar pool tables and line dancing lessons most weekends. (Find out who’s playing on the OshaWhat events listing.) Here, my wife’s country roots dug in.
I was slightly intimidated at the beginning of my line dancing career, but our instructor was very forgiving, and we were not the only ones new to choreographed dance ensemble. (The secret to line dancing is to keep to the middle of the pack, that way you don’t stick out when you screw up.)
After two songs, they announced a more difficult routine geared for advanced dancers.
Like every great stampede, all it took was one spooked rookie to vacate the dance floor to start a movement. Soon the pros had loads of room to show us how to really take the bull by the horns. It was at that point that my wife and I decided to take advantage of the pool tables at the back of the venue.
Pool is not exactly our strong suit either, but I like to think that I can fare well most of the time. This was not one of those times. What started out as a best of three quickly turned to be the best of five and then seven.
I was just getting into my swing when the band started up and my wife got that twinkle in her eye and a twitch in her nose that tells me she’s excited. We moved up close to the action and enjoyed some classic country hits and some fine two-stepping.
The thing with the two-step is that you go in circles, and can only dance a few songs at a time before becoming dizzily disoriented. Or at least that’s what happens to me.
Generally I’m not a huge fan of new country, but seeing it live works. Everyone from the young to the old seemed to be having more fun than a good old fashioned cow tipping. There was a good mix of people. It seemed like a large majority of 40-somethings came out for the line dancing. One gentleman sat head banging by himself, sipping a cola. Two other gentlemen seemed to enjoy dancing with different partners every song. As the night progressed a larger demographic of twenty- and thirty-somethings showed up on the floor.
The great thing about stepping outside the box and into the two-step was learning that it didn’t disagree with me like I thought it might. By compromising to my wife’s likes, I realized I have a little more country in me than I thought.
