Dear reader, I am a terrible dancer. I must warn you: I move like R2-D2.

My dance career began and ended at age ten. One of my cousins gave a party when we were visiting my uncles in the capital. I was supposed to dance with an eleven-year-old blonde girl, a friend of my cousin's, and already taller than me. I found her very attractive at that time. My aunt announced with great fanfare that the girl, Elena, wanted to dance with me. I was very upset with my aunt for what she said in front of my brothers, but something inside me was feeling high. I was thinking: This is it. This is my moment.

It was not my moment.

The moment we started, my legs turned to jelly. I wobbled. I was hopelessly off-beat, a clumsy robot clunking through a waltz. She smiled at first, kindly, I think, and then she broke into laughter. Not mean laughter, but laughter all the same. I didn’t know where to look. I tried to vanish into the wallpaper, my face burning red.

My brothers, spotting fresh entertainment, began clapping and hooting like it was a circus act and I was the clown.

And then, when my torment ended, somehow, she leaned in, wrapped her arms around me, and kissed me on the cheek. My aunt erupted: "Once more! Once more!"

But I was done. Toasted. I slipped away and disappeared into the kitchen.

That was it. My debut. My finale. My career as a dancer, retired before fifth grade.

And so the damage was done. That the ten-year-old boy, is still hiding somewhere in the kitchen, never quite left. Decades later, any tall blonde can still make my heart race, not just with attraction, but with the old, familiar dread. She’ll laugh. She’ll toy with me. And then, with a grin, she’ll kiss me goodbye.