Dateline: June 6, 2023. Sweet 16.
Today marks my 16th anniversary of my introduction
to salsa. A year and a half before, I
lost Retta, my best friend and wife of 15 years, to complications of Hepatitis
C. After mourning her loss for a year, I
put my grief away, and began to search for something to occupy my time.
Sometime later, I saw an ad in the paper for “Free salsa
lessons at Ruta Maya.”
I thought, “Oh, good, I’ll go try that.”
So I went on Wednesday,
June 6, 2007, which was also D Day.
Now, you must understand, I had never heard of salsa as a
dance. It was completely foreign to
me. I thought I was going to a cooking
class. I walked in the door with a bag
of chips under my arm, not knowing whether we were going to make red salsa or
green salsa. What I saw and heard and
felt, with the pounding rhythms, the beautiful girls spinning and twirling, the
guys looking calm and confident, changed me forever.
I said: “I want THAT!”
And here I am.
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