This is Armando, my dance teacher from Caruso Dance Sport on Palm Beach. He is going to try to teach me to swing dance so I can go toe-to-toe with Mayor Lois Frankel and the local stars of television news and radio at the Young Friends of the Kravis’ “Dancing For The Stars” event in March.

It’s so cute that he thinks I can do this.

Actually, our first two lessons haven’t been bad, which is to say that I haven’t broken his foot or gone running and sobbing out of the studio. So far, my basic dance issues are:

- Forgetting what foot I am on
- Forgetting what foot Armando is on
- Forgetting what feet are

Armando is really patient and very funny, and I’m hoping not to break his confidence in his own skills by stinking. At yesterday’s lesson, however I did have one of those “Dirty Dancing” moments where I just could not get what he was saying, and I felt as useless and out of place as Baby, when she’s in this den of sexy dancers and the only contribution she can think that she has made is “I carried a watermelon.”

And so far Leslie is carrying that watermelon all around Caruso Dancesport.

But I think it’s all gonna work out. Because it has to.