The Cuban Boy Who Couldn't Dance

For today, I offer a random but amusing story....

I was going through some closets the other day in a weak pretense of spring cleaning, and I happened upon my copy of Jose's and my wedding video. (Which just reminds me that I need to have it transferred to DVD one of these days....)

As always, the mere sight of our homemade tape with "Jose and Tracy's wedding" scrawled across the label in black marker (Classy.) cracked me up. In a nutshell, the overarching theme of the Story of Our Wedding Video is that my husband Jose is quite possibly the only Cuban male In the world who cannot dance. (Think Elaine from Seinfeld, and then give her sudden growth spurts or electroshock therapy in medias res.)

Jose, bless him, is also kind of a cheapass, so I had to plan our wedding by myself and just not tell him how much my parents and I were spending so he could continue to keep his blood pressure at a healthy level. Consequently, I cut a few corners out of respect for his cheapassness (cheapassitude?), including not hiring a videographer. My uncle Mike took the video at the ceremony with a handheld camera (turning off said camera at random moments, like, oh, THE EXCHANGING OF THE RINGS!!!!), and my Tia Yessenia (from Honduras) took the reception video (which got progressively wobblier the more Yessenia ran into Waiters With Wine). The result is hardly polished perfection, but here's why I love it more than words can express:

When the dance portion of the reception started up, Jose and I followed tradition and had the first dance alone, to Juan Luis Guerra y 440's "Bachata Rosa." Yessenia, by this time mildly plowed, zoomed in on us and started commenting en Espanol (there's a tilda over that N) about how there we were, doing our bride and groom dance, and how great it was that we picked a Spanish song. Then, there's a HUGE pause while she and my Tia Dulce watched us lurch from one side of the dance floor to the other--broken up by Jose occasionally stopping to spin around on one foot in his own specialm slightly drunken re-enactment of Saturday Night Fever. And then, you hear this sharp, high-pitched, distinctively Honduran inhale (uh-EEEEEEEEEEE!) followed by, "Ayyyyyy, Dios miiiiiiiiiiio! El no puede bailarrrrrrrrr!"

Rough translation: Oh, my God, that boy can't dance.

Though the video has degraded quite a bit, you can still hear Yessenia if you turn the volume way up.

Wedding DJ: roughly $500
Juan Luis Guerra CD with "Bachata Rosa" on it: $15.95
Blank video tape on which to record wedding and reception: $1.50
Video featuring aunt freaking out about the lone Latino in the Rysavy-Veroi-Fernandez clan with a tragic lack of rhythm: Priceless.

For what it's worth, I'm an OK dancer, but I look like I'm doing the robot compared to the Honduran side of my family--not to mention my 90-year-old grandfather on my dad's side, who does a wicked fast polka. So mine is not to criticize, unless I'm telling this particular story. And I have to tell it, repeatedly, because it's hilarious.