A Sidewalk Mambo (Life's a Dance You Learn As Go)

All along the sidewalks of the North Shore in Chattanooga, you'll find the steps to the most romantic dances cast right there in the cement. It brings to mind a time I missed by my age--a time when dancing was just "assumed" as a part of a girl's "education." I suppose in the world of cotillions and coming out and debutantes, it still is. Oh, to be a part of that world for just FIVE MINUTES, just as on onlooker with a dance card.

The closest I ever came to peering in on that life was when my Air Force community commander sent his daughter off to "etiquette school" after she was found, ahem, dethroned in the security police dormitory. Poor girl. Still, I bet they didn't teach her the mambo.