big dresses, big music

Today I took my comprehensive exams. I think I totally rocked them. First was child development, and they asked to pick an area of development and explain the interaction of nature and nurture on this area. I picked language development and wrote about 3-4 pages in less than an hour. Go me!
Second was program administration. This one was about the problem solving process which I had just reviewed with others out in the hall. Done and done.
I was SO scared about comps and the feeling of relief I had when I left was amazing. I had that level of wonderful feeling that is so big you feel like exploding or turning yourself inside out because there is just too much happy and relief inside you.
After running over to work to tell my boss how things went, I went to the park with my current reading obsession, Sense and Sensibility. I grew tired of the Nesbit novel (unhappily. I really wanted to love it).
I sat there watching the river, reading, watching people play fetch with their dog, reading some more, and then an old Hispanic man walked up and greeted me. We talked about how beautiful the park was, and he told me about how he goes there early in the morning when the mist is rising off the water and no one is there. He really seemed to love it when there aren't many people there.
He asked me if I was going to school at the university and I told him that I was graduating with my Master's degree in the spring. He did a double take because he thought I was a freshman, and did another when I told him I'm 24.
Then he asked if he could sit on the bench with me.

Now, let me just preface this with my intense level of discomfort. I don't talk to strangers. As a former cop's daughter, I'm on constant alert. So, I kept an exit strategy in mind the whole time and quickly assessed him to see if I could maybe disarm him in a fight.

I told him of course he could sit on the bench with me. He started asking me various questions which led to him telling long stories about his life.
"Do you dance?"
"Not really now, but I used to dance ballet."
"OH! Ballet! I used to dance folklorico [ballet folklorico is a native dance in Mexico. I loooove watching it]."
He pulled from his wallet pictures of himself as a child dressed in the traditional mariachi style clothing, quite young. I am still trying to figure out why he had pictures of himself as a child in his wallet.
He also used to teach various forms of ballroom dancing:
"The WALTZ! I love the waltz!" he put his hands out and swayed as if he was waltzing sitting there with me on the bench. "The music is so BIG with the big dresses and the movement...laa da dah laaa da dah..."
He said he will go to the bars in San Antonio (because they start dancing at noon) and dance from bar to bar "BAR HOPPING! I love to go BAR HOPPING! I dance eight hours and then go home by 9! And do you know why I can dance so much?"
"Why?"
"Because I don't DRINK!"
This caught my interest. I thought this whole time I was listening to a randy old barfly with a bit of character. No, this guy went to the bars just for the dancing.
Then he told me he used to be an alcoholic. He used to weigh 250 pounds (he was probably about 5'6" if I was generous), would drink a bottle of liquor every night, and took medicine for just about everything that could go wrong with someone. One night he landed in the hospital dying. He said the people in the hospital "pumped all the stuff out of him" and he lost 150 pounds in five days (I'm guessing liposuction but I don't know). The doctor told him that he thought all his problems came from the liquor, so he said not to take any of his medicine but also not to drink any alcohol. The man felt completely brand new after this.
"You know what? That stuff is expensive!" he started saving the money he would have spent on the nightly bottle of liquor and bought a truck. Then he saved more and bought a mustang. He drove back and forth between Austin and San Antonio dancing.
"When I go dancing with a beautiful young woman in my arms holding her close, I am just cursing myself! 'You used to be sloppy laid out on your front porch drunk and you could have been dancing with beautiful women your whole life! All that time -- wasted!'"
I was truly amazed. I don't know how much of his story was true, but I did love every bit of it. We departed, saying maybe we would see each other in the park again someday.
I think talking to a stranger alone in the park counts as being daring! Hooray for resolutions!