EXPERIENCE ARIZONA

LEARNING TO DANCE Comes Easier to PEACOCKS Than MEN

IF YOU EVER WANT A GOOD LAUGH, HEAD over to the Phoenix Zoo. You won't find that zoo listed among Arizonas comedy clubs, but there you can witness a phenomenon that's funny.

The male peacocks have a mating dance they do for their befeathered heartthrobs. They fan their gorgeous tail feathers and then shimmy them in a dazzling display that we humans find intriguing and the peahens find absolutely irresistible.

None of this is laughable, of course. It's serious, procreative business. The adolescent peacocks, though, provide the comedy relief. Even though they're not yet ready to mate, they like to flirt. Imitating their more mature colleagues, they flourish those tail feathers, shake them, and strut around as cool and as proud as well... a peacock. The peahens ignore them. They turn and strut away with peafowl body language for, "Go away, kid, you bother me."

Rather than get discouraged, the youngsters, rebuffed by the opposite sex of their own species, practice their flirting on inanimate objects. At the zoo, you can watch young peacocks trying to impress and attract fire hydrants, lampposts and trash cans.

It's laughable - except to the young birds. To them it's frustrating.

I sympathize with the rejected fowl. My own dancing - sort of a mating ritual among humans - has always been gauche, ineffective and hilarious. At any festivities that included dancing, my wife would say to me, "Would you like to dance?

I'd say, "Maybe a little later."

A little later, she would change it from a question to a declarative statement: "Dance with me."

I'd say, "In a while."

In a while, she'd change it from a declarative statement to a demand: "Dance with me," she'd say while twisting my arm behind my back in a painful fashiona trick she learned from a former beau who was also captain of the high school wrestling squad.

So I'd dance with her, but not well. The young peacock grows older, more confident, more attractive and eventually his dancing earns him a mate. My dancing stayed gauche.

So I recently signed up for dancing lessons. My wife said, "I think it would be a good idea." She said it while twisting my arm "If you're not loafing in your retirement, you're not working hard enough at it," says Gene Perret in his book Retirement: Twice the Time, Half the Money. To order this book ($6.95 plus shipping and handling) or other Perret humor books, call toll-free (800) 543-5432. In Phoenix call (602) 712-2000. Or use arizonahighways.com.

behind my back in the aforementioned painful grip.

At the initial lesson, the instructor put on a recording and said, "Do a few steps for me. I want to get an idea of how you dance." So I glided around the floor as gracefully as I could.

The instructor said, "No, seriously. Do a few steps for me. I want to see how you dance."

I said, "That is how I dance."

She said, "Where did you learn that? At the Phoenix Zoo?"

I said, "Can you help me?"

She said, "We teach beginners, intermediates and experts, but I'm sure we can create a category for you, too."

And so the lessons are progressingbut not well. Some of those young Phoenix Zoo peacocks have since perfected their routine, won a spouse, honeymooned and begun to raise a family while I'm still learning to count to four and move at the same time.

I don't have two left feet. That's not only a cliché, but also an exaggeration and physically inaccurate. I have a right foot and a left foot. The problem is they don't get along.

They're jealous of one another and fiercely competitive. If my left foot does something correctly, the right foot, in spite, does something incorrectly. That now confuses the left foot.

Conversely, should my right execute the proper move, my left foot counters with an improper move, confounding the right foot. It makes dancing difficult.

When my instructor told me she was going to teach me a new pattern, I said, "Whisper the first step to me."

She said, "What?"

I repeated, "Whisper to me."

She asked why.

I said, "I don't want my right foot to know what my left foot is doing."

She said, "Sir, if there's anything you've mastered in the few short lessons you've had, it's the ability to keep one foot from knowing what the other foot is doing."

So, if you ever want a good laugh, head over to the Phoenix Zoo. Or you could come over and ask me to dance. May I recommend the mambo? The way I do it, it's particularly hilarious. AH