Last year, my daughter's studio introduced a new adult beginner tap class, and I gleefully jumped right in. I will do anything to try to connect with my rapidly growing tween before she is off and gone, even if it means looking like a giraffe with a broken leg in front of a room full of strangers. I have to admit, I can't remember the last time I had so much fun or laughed so hard at myself. And my daughter had a great time finally feeling like expert who had a thing or two to teach her old mom when I showed her my new moved. It was in this class that I met a woman who had been brought there from her retirement home by an aide. She was in her 80's and well advanced with Alzheimer's, but she had been a tap dancer in her youth and, somehow, every step remained ingrained in her body, even when her mind couldn't remember a name or where she was. This woman danced circles around all of us. Sometimes literally. Always with great joy and abandon. It is my sincere wish to learn now so that if I am older and my mind is slipping, my body will still remember, and respond to the music in blissful memory.