In a city not very far from here, there once lived a man who was quite ordinary in every way except one. He was the worst tap dancer the city had ever known. He was possibly the worst tap dancer that had ever lived.

This man had never learned to tap dance. He had never taken a lesson. His entire experience of tap dancing was limited to two or three old movies he had seen on TV. In these movies, the dancers moved very beautifully and joyfully. The man found watching them extraordinarily soothing. For this reason, he decided that he would like to be a tap dancer himself.

Every afternoon, the man would go to the park and set a coffee can on the path that led from the rose garden to the pond. He would put a few quarters in the can himself so that nobody would think they were the first to give him money. Then he would tap dance until sunset. He danced terribly, but passers-by would sometimes drop change in his can out of kindness or pity.

The man never realized that he was a bad dancer. He tried to move his legs and feet just as the tap dancers had done on TV and he pictured himself to be as graceful and agile as they. One thing about dancing, however, especially bad dancing, is that one seldom looks as one imagines oneself to look. So it was with him. His movements were awkward and his rhythm was off. He tended to forget about his arms and leave them to flail absurdly. He did not even wear taps on his shoes. (He didn’t know that such a thing existed.)

One day a particularly handsome man came up the path upon which the tap dancer was dancing. This man was so particularly handsome that he might have been the handsomest man in the entire city, though it is doubtful that he was the handsomest man that had ever lived.

The handsome man became immediately enthralled with the tap dancer. He did not realize that the tap dancer was tap dancing. He thought that he was moving in an eccentric and erratic way which was utterly original and charming. The handsome man was not in a hurry so he stayed and watched the tap dancer for twenty minutes. During that time he fell in love with him.

At last, the tap dancer stopped for a break and bowed to the handsome man, who was his only spectator. The handsome man thought this an appropriate moment to declare his love and he did so. The tap dancer thought to himself, "This fellow certainly is handsome. That can’t be denied. I may as well fall in love with him too."

Sure enough, the tap dancer soon came to believe that he was in love with the handsome man. In fact, however, he was only awfully fond of him. You see, the tap dancer was in the rare but unfortunate circumstance of having his true love live in another city entirely and be destined never to cross his path. So the tap dancer never realized that he was not in love with the handsome man, but only awfully fond of him. Nonetheless the two lived happily together until their old age.