
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 1, 1995                   TAG: 9511010021
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LET'S DANCE OUR WORRIES AWAY

Not long after the automated garbage truck came by earlier than usual and our trash can was not set out, arrows to the road, I read Jane Brody's column about dancing therapy.

Great medical advances usually pass me by, and this is going to be the case with dancing therapy. For one thing, I doubt that it's covered by Medicare - the con game older Americans are using to stay around longer than they should and that Newt Gingrich and other Republicans are going to put a stop to.

Let's get on with this, however. Every time I think about Newt or see him on the tube I get phantom gall bladder pains.

To return, then, to our topic, you can plainly see that dance therapy would be of little help with my garbage-truck trauma.

And let's face it, it does something to a man to see the county's colorful garbage truck go by while his garbage is still tastefully concealed in the pine trees at the side of the house.

Suburban garbage is a mental burden you can learn to live with, but in the very cores of ourselves we are always afraid something will happen and it won't be picked up.

How do you dance to get rid of this affliction? Beats an old two-stepper like me. Maybe Gene Kelly could figure it out.

Oh, I could try, all right. And then the neighbors would start talking:

``You see Old Bennie dancing on the lawn like an aging water buffalo? Kind of reminds you of the county garbage truck, except it's prettier and makes a lot more noise. Sad, actually.''

The primary reason I dance like an aging water buffalo is my left foot, which tends to get sore occasionally. Has nothing to do with gout, now that you ask. Listen. My body is a temple.

Eighty percent of your sore left foot, as of this moment, is still covered by Medicare after you meet the deductible. But don't anybody tell Newt. OK?

No matter what trauma I was trying to get rid of, I would do the same dance:

``Mr. Beagle, I hardly think you are going to get rid of your obsession with the little raincoat that had `I Do Not Choose to Run' printed all over it. I know that your mother bought it for you in 1932; but this fevered lunging about the room like an aging, drunken water buffalo will not help you deal with the fact that it is gone forever.''

I don't mean to discourage you from dancing therapy. If you've got two good feet, go out there and dance your raincoat obsession away.

by CNB