MAKE ROOM FOR ENTHUSIASTIC BALLROOM DANCERS

Hello, friend!

Many years ago I was eating tacos in a lovely hole-in-the-wall bar that had every surface covered with Lotería cards and old signs and bull-fighting posters and dusty advertisements from the 40s. I spent a lot of time reading the walls and ceilings but there was one old, small wooden sign that was tucked into a corner that has stayed with me forever. It said, simply:

And I was so absolutely charmed with the idea that unexpected ballroom dancing could suddenly break out at any minute. And not only that, but management was preemptively stating that if any ballroom dancers did show up at this impossibly tiny dive, we would all be expected to give way to them…especially to those enthusiastic ones who danced with wild abandon. I loved the idea that we should be not only watching for this sort of implausible magic, but that we were expected to protect it as well.

I asked the bartender and he looked at me like I was crazy until I pointed to the small sign and then he said there “had never been any ballroom dancing there during working hours at least.” And so I imagined that (after closing) perhaps tiny mice danced through the restaurant in the moonlight, inspired by the sign’s suggestion. It was utterly ridiculous but it made me smile and so I sketched it out so I would always remember it:

And this is where the story would have ended (with me just entertaining myself with weird whimsy) except that I just saw this photograph that won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year and…well:

According to the photographer, these two mice had a small scuffle over a crumb in the London Underground and then went their separate ways, but I’d like to think that he accidentally caught a moment of enthusiastic dance practice that seemed too improbable to be real.

But we know better.

Probably.

Love,

me