Dancing in the Street

During a lunchtime high school conversation my friend and neighbor Jesus Valdez mentioned he had seen me dancing in the street. Naturally, I looked at him incredulously as I assured him at no point had I done any such thing. It would have been impossible for him to have seen me doing so, because I had not been dancing in the street.

At the time, I lived two houses off the main road down a perpendicular street. He assured me he had driven by, looked down my road, and had seen me standing in the street, dancing.

I couldn't make heads or tails of what he possibly thought he saw, but I was nonetheless adamant that I was decidedly not dancing in the street.

Yet he wouldn't budge either.

So I began a series of questions, "Where in the street was I? Was anyone with me? What time of day was this?" I was hoping to narrow it down. Once he answered all my questions, the realization hit me so hard that it was visible in my face. From his perspective, I had been dancing in the street.

You see, my 1968 Dodge Coronet 440, the pride and joy of my youth, had been misfiring. Daniel Anderson had been with me and we were working on the problem together. After cleaning the spark plug wires and plugging them back in, I had started the car, but the misfire was still present. So I reached into the engine bay and one at a time used my thumb to press on the rubber insulator ensuring the contacts were secure. Rubber or not, at one point, it shocked me. Flailing around under the hood of my car, I reached for the first thing I could grab - Daniel! The shock left me and entered him. It was these few seconds that Jesus just happened to be driving by, looked down my road, and saw me being shocked, then grabbing Daniel, who obviously reacted physically as well. What fun we must have looked like we were having as it appeared we were dancing in the street.