Recruitment day

My (main) dance studio will open only in two weeks, but one of the teachers asked everybody to come and dance in the street, while giving flyers to the passers-by.

And on this windy chilly Sunday morning one dozen of volunteers were there, with their worn-out tango shoes. One half of the pupils were told to dance, and the other half were given flyers. I was put in the dancers group, my partner being one of the assistants.
Granted, sidewalks here aren’t as bad as the BsAs ones, but a sidewalk remains a sidewalk. Despite large amounts of talc on my soles and even with the help of my partner it was clear to me that the elusive audience was not exactly impressed.

It became clear to the teacher too and he soon called me.
“Ok, the people keep asking me if you’re both beginners and it’s a bit embarrassing, let’s make a switch, here are some flyers. Your target will be the ladies.”

Cool. One minute later I was in the middle of the road chatting with a mother and her daughter, answering their questions, saying to the latter that no, most probably there would not be teens in the class, only (very) mature guys, and to the former that yes, it was true that many people danced chest-to-chest, even with a stranger. For some reason they gave me back my flyers.

The teacher called me once again. “Forget the young people, and remember we’re trying to recruit pupils.” Well then, one nice thing with older passers-by is, even at full speed they’re easy to catch, they can’t walk very fast.
“No, no, young man, this is not for me.”
“Yes ma’am, it is, age or weight is not important for tango, take this flyer, see, we have classes every night and…”
“But look, young man, I have a peg leg!”

Oops.

The teacher confiscated my flyers. “Can you see the CD player? Good. You will remain over there, you sit and you replace the CD each time it ends.”