This month, our twin 16-year-old daughters are slated to come out as debutantes at a fancy ball. This means that they will go out and buy fancy white dresses, and their escorts will rent tuxes. Then we'll all go to a big hall and, for one night, act like we do this all the time. This also means something far scarier. There will be a father-daughter dance, and I will, for the first time in my life since 6th grade, be forced to waltz in public.

Dancing does not come naturally to me. Sure, I can do the faster dances, where you bend at the waist, move your hips like your rear end is a stuck ketchup bottle and bite your lower lip, all while ducking your head side to side. (At least, that's the way I roll. If you've never seen it in person, it's quite fascinating.) I even spin around and clap once in a while (usually at weddings, and only when there's an open bar). But I have never been all that good at slower, more formal stuff, stuff I like to call the "Beauty and the Beast" school of dancing.

It's not like I never had dance instruction. When I was in middle school, every kid in the district had to attend what was known as "Junior Assembly." Junior Assembly was run by a husband and wife who ran the practice like aging drill sergeants. Kids were shoved into the room by their parents like smelly, awkward lambs to the slaughter.

The first rule of Junior Assembly was that every kid danced every dance, and it was first come, first served, with the husband and wife barking out warnings about how time was running out, and that the very last boy standing would have to dance ... with the wife. This meant that the most awkward boys and girls, the ones hugging the walls, were paired up together at the end, in almost a reverse of the theory of Darwinism.

I know this because I was always the most timid and the last to ask a girl, and so usually ended up with a girl who refused to make eye contact or made funny noises. The girl, in turn, probably thought she was the one who ended up with the fuzzy end of the lollipop. And that's only if I found the courage in time to make a pick. Many times I had to dance with the wife, who rolled her eyes when she saw me standing alone. I don't know how much she and her husband got paid to run Junior Assembly, but it wasn't enough. At least not for her.

So Junior Assembly was a traumatic experience for me. Even as an adult, every time I have to get out on a dance floor and do any formal dancing, I get a little nervous. To waltz, you have to be able to count 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 ... endlessly. I cannot. I can do 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2 till the cows come home, shuffling from foot to foot like a zombie with no particular place to go, but 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3? That adds a level of complexity I simply cannot deal with.

I have had plenty of notice that this ball was coming up. My wife has been warning me for more than a year that I am a terrible dancer and that I'd have to sign up for dance lessons if I didn't want to turn my daughters into laughing stocks. (No pressure, though. Really.)

But my strategy has always been to put off stuff I find annoying. It's why my dentist hates me, the oil in my car looks like road tar and I'll be up with a calculator until midnight on April 15th. So I've neglected to sign up for formal lessons. (That is how I roll.)

My wife has ordered me to sign up for at least one dance lesson, sort of a cram course in the waltz. I don't have to be Fred Astaire or anything. I just have to get through a 4-minute father-daughter dance and still have daughters who want me to remain their father.

But memories of Junior Assembly stick with a guy. Decades later, I still get sweaty palms when I think of dance lessons. Maybe I can just dig through the dusty shelf of VHS tapes in the basement, find the girls' old Disney movies and hit fast-forward until I get to the dance scene in "Beauty and the Beast," and then sit and take careful notes.

I hope the music at the ball is nice and loud. I'm pretty sure it will be hard for people to enjoy the dance with some chucklehead on the dance floor counting, in an unsteady voice, "1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 ... ah, &*^*& ... 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2..."

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