Why everyone should go get themselves one of those Mundial Championship Numero Uno thingys

Like everyone else in the Mundo de Tango, I viewed the victory dance of the latest Tango Salon Mundial Championships as soon as it was available on YouTube:

Yeah, so who hasn't seen this before?

So, how was it? Were they very elegant? Muy-oui! Did they dance good? Bien sur! Do they look just a little wee tiny bit like all the other gazillion "Salon" couples coached by the same revered coaches? Mas o menos. Was any one surprised? No way!

So there I sat, head propped by hand in front of the video playing on my laptop with an internal dialogue going "meh...meh...meh...meh............." - when suddenly, "los campeones mundial de Tango Salon 2010" started to do rapid, continuous whirling dervishes. With enough centrifugal force to separate the curds from the whey - without any curdling!*

* Now, that's some awesome Skill!

My brow started to furrow and I broke out in a cold sweat. I slammed down the lid of my computer, got up, went to the window - and spent the next thirty seconds breathing loudly and looking blankly outside at the fading afternoon.

But it was too late. The image of them gleefully turning, turning, turning... had seared itself into my brain.

Then came the sleepless nights - a week of restless tossing in bed. The image of them going round and round played in my mind like a broken track of a music box with one of those creepy, spinning ballerinas. It even seeped into my dreams.

They spun, laughing and giddy, on the crumbling deck of my parent's house. They spun, happy and triumphant, in cereal aisle of the local T&T. They even spun, resplendent and invincible, in the zero gravity of the International Space Station - floating astronauts looking on in shock and awe.

Why did they do that? What does it mean? What would happen if they collided violently into a crowd of brittle little eighty-year-old milonguero couples at Lo de Celia - like a bowling ball flung into a set of unsuspecting pins? These were the questions that haunted me...

...Until I went to the milonga on Friday night.

After being charged and bumped on the dance floor the umpteenth time by yet another out-of-control Toronto Tanguero with no sense of personal space - it literally hit me.

"Man Yung, we've got to get us one of those Mundial Championship Numero Uno thingys."

Man Yung looked at me like I had gone mad.

"Look, we've seen it before - remember how the crowded dance floor always parted like the red sea around any "campeones" present at the milongas in Buenos Aires?"

"Yeah, I remember - so what?" said Man Yung.

"Well, I just realized why the latest Tango Salon champions were whirling around like they won Tango Stage. They had just been handed the ultimate tango freedom. They're eighteen, right? This means - that for the next sixty years, they will have carte blanche to do whatever lovely face-kicking, toe-crushing figure they'd like - and everyone will give them the space!"

Man Yung was flabbergasted. I was absolutely right. Maybe we, too, would be finally able to dance in peace without risking life and limb on the mean, dangerous Torontonian pistas.

"Irene, let's keep this between ourselves," Man Yung added cautiously. "So many people in Toronto are already dancing like they are champions - all they need is to win an actual championship, and no one will ever complain that they aren't dancing any kind of tango fit for a milonga!" "