Tutus and Charleston Chews

In lieu of talking about everything that's making me want a beer right now, I've decided to flash back to dance class 1990.

First, I feel like I should tell you a few very important things.

1) I have huge thighs, and they were with me then, too. So at age 9, my huge thighs were plopped into pale pink tights. No, I can't imagine anything worse.
2) I sucked at dancing. Super sucked. I know with kids now I'm supposed to say things like, "Oh, honey, sucked is a bad word - and so strong - can't you say you weren't very good?" But the strong word is necessary here. I sucked.
3) There was only one thing I loved about dance class. There was only one thing I even liked about dance class. Afterward, my mom would take me to the grocery store right next door and I would get a candy bar. (See #1 huge thighs).

On this particular day, we were all preparing for a recital. I had my token place in the back row where I was no doubt preemptively weighing my options between a 3 Musketeers and a Charleston Chew when things got serious. The owner of the dance studio came in.

She was elusive. Sure, her name was on the outside of the building, but until then, the woman with big black hair and skinny legs was our teacher. Not this woman.

She had gray hair and stick thin legs and a voice like she'd been smoking for 137 years.

She also had a pointer.

She stood up front and said, "Dance monkeys, dance!"

Okay. Not really, but it felt that way. She asked us to run through our routine and every three seconds she would yell, "Stop the music!" and she would critique someone's stance or someone's wrist or someone's eyelashes.

I'd never been happier to be in the back row.

"STOP THE MUSIC!" she screamed a last time. And then her beady eyes settled on a poor slim girl to my front left. I remember her. I remember her hair. I remember her thin legs. I remember the way that the whole situation looked a lot like a hawk circling a mouse.

"Everyone, look over here!" she said, sticking her pointer right at the poor girl. "LOOK!"

"Thissssss....," she said narrowing her eyes and pointing at the girl's behind, "is why we don't wear underwear. Look at this ugly line!"  

I watched tears roll down the little girls cheeks and I thought about a lot of mean things I could say to this woman. And above all of them, I heard a voice screaming in my head, "You were not meant for dance. You always wear underwear!"

And that was it. That was my last dance class. There are moments in life when you realize you just weren't meant for something, and with my underwear and huge thighs and love of chocolate, I knew I wasn't meant for dance. I enjoyed every single bite of my Charleston Chew on the way home that night, and I started contemplating all of the chocolate bars I would get to eat now that I didn't have dance weighing down my snack time.

I'm ambitious like that.