I'm a real bear of a dancer

I did an extremely manly thing Thursday morning.

Replica watches

I bought new shoes. Not just any shoes. I bought dancing shoes. Ballroom dancing shoes.

It was a new experience for me. Over the years, as a typical Canadian guy, I've bought all kinds of shoes -- football shoes, basketball shoes, running shoes -- but dancing shoes are a little out of my comfort zone.

When I was growing up, owning a pair of dancing shoes would have caused older kids at my high school to hold you upside-down and stick your head in the toilet.

But that was then. On Thursday, Pete Larsen, the wholesale manager at Mallabar who sizes me up for an extra-large Santa suit every Christmas, helped me pick out these size 12 1/2 beauties.

I asked Pete whether he gets many middle-aged, six-foot-four, 288-pound guys coming in looking for professional-quality dancing footwear.

"No," is what he said before a brief pause, adding: "We don't do a lot of ballroom stuff, but we decided to carry it as soon as Dancing With The Stars came on TV. People look for ballroom shoes now; before that (show), no one did."

In a couple of hours, I'm going to give these spiffy new shoes their first trial run. I have to meet my dance partner, a beautiful Russian-born dancer named Anna Rudman, to put the finishing touches on our rumba routine.

It will be one of our final practices before we hit the floor May 1 for Dancing With Celebrities, in which local personalities are teamed up with actual dancers in a ballroom competition. Twice Replica watches a week for the last three months, Anna has been struggling to transform me from a 288-pound sandbag into a 288-pound sandbag with expensive new shoes.

Like I said earlier, I'm a little out of my comfort zone. But that's OK. In fact, that's the point! Dancing With Celebrities raises funds for the Society for Manitobans with Disabilities/Easter Seals. As I stumbled through my first practice three months ago, Andrew Terhoch, the society's special events manager, explained being out of your comfort zone is an everyday thing for someone with a disability.

"We do this event to showcase our philosophy that, with the right support, anything is possible," Andrew said. "It's not always easy to step out in the world and try something new. To get out on the dance floor for the first time is more about how the music moves you than how you move to the music."

I'm pretty sure he said that to make me feel better, and it did. I think I understand what he meant.

I understand because learning to do the rumba is one of the hardest things I've ever tried. On a sliding scale of difficulty, it's somewhere between nuclear physics and NASCAR.

There's a video of Anna and me on the Free Press website. My buddy, Bob watched it and -- I'm sure this came from his heart -- said it was like watching a huge clumsy bear escape from a zoo, stumble on a beautiful young girl and, in super slow motion, attack her on a dance floor.

The Replica watches other day, a little frustrated, I asked Margaret Motyka, co-owner of the dance studio, what my problem was. She flashed a brilliant smile and laughed: "You don't have a problem, Doug! Look at you, you're dancing!"

Whenever I go to a charity dinner, like last Saturday, every guy in the room will come up to me. And do you know what we talk about? Y
Other articles:
http://www.glljyr.com/Blog/View/?1526
http://whitegroud.blog.com/2010/07/12/parade-of-pride/