Friday, December 31, 2004
 Another Christmas come and gone. Hundreds of dollars spent on gifts of books, toys and clothes for Little Girl, and as it turns out Sophie was most enamoured of the bubble wrap from the packing. It held her attention for up to 10 minutes at a stretch, definitely a record. Next Christmas we'll just have a truckload of bubble wrap delivered directly to our house.
So here we are at the curtain call of 2004, the final leg of which was a mad dash here at Cheezwerks HQ. Both Sean and I found ourselves working for small businesses this year, with the obvious associated drawbacks but also some unexpected fringe benefits. I have fewer coworkers than the Pope has ex-girlfriends, so my office - along with spouses, significant others and children - went to a Japanese restaurant for our end-of-year celebration. It really was a lovely time, right up until Sophie winged her sippy cup across the table at the company president and overturned a glass of ice water into his daughter's lap. NOT SO COOCHIE-COO-CUTE NOW, IS SHE?!
Despite the horror of having my kid sprout demon horns and a tail in front of my unsuspecting coworkers, the dinner thing was far better than past office holiday events. There's something to be said for not having to attend a huge "formal" corporate holiday party with booty call music and the Big Boss' drunk wife feeling up one of the IT guys on the dance floor. (Yes. In 1996, during an otherwise unmemorable chapter of my employment history.) The dancing expectation in itself more or less represents my own personal episode of Fear Factor.
The Long, Sordid, Chronologically Arranged Tale of Me and The Not Dancing
Toddlerhood: My mom tells me now that I didn't really dance to music the way most babies do. You'd think this would have been a sign.
Preschool - Early Middle School Years: I'm enrolled in ballet, tap, jazz and pointe classes through County Parks & Recreation. I completely miss Saturday morning cartoons from ages 4 through 11 in favor of hours of dance instruction so that every May I can turn out a stunning recital performance that basically boils down to copying the dance steps from other more diligent students. Speaking of the recitals, they were characterized by REALLY STUPID costumes. Can anyone identify those things on our heads in the photo below? My best guess is that they're two-dimensional green plaid butts.
The year I'm 10, our ballet dance routine is supposed to look like waltzes, so we're organized into pairs. I'm stuck with a girl who is a little strange, much in the same way that Donald Trump can be said to be kinda successful. Things come to a head the day she blurts out "EAT ME, BUTTERFLY! I'M AN APPLE!" during the opening curtsey/bow sequence. After class I complain to our teacher, who gives me some lame-ass school counselor type of stupid lecture about the importance of being kindhearted to the mentally unbalanced. I (1) feel that this is pretty easy for her to say considering that she's not dancing with one of them, and (2) commence a long aversion to paired dances. And being kindhearted.
For reasons that completely escape me, at age 11 I enroll with a different dance program. They favor modern and "ethnic" dance, which includes an African move that looks like a ribcage detaching from a spine. I'm so busted: that TOTALLY can't be copied off the nearest girl during the dance recital! At some point into my horrified silent ride home after class, my father turns to me and says, "It's okay if you want to quit." People, I cannot TELL you how rare it was for my parents to allow me to quit anything! I gratefully jump at the offer. This should have been YET ANOTHER CLUE.
Seventh Grade: I'm going to be AN ACTRESS when I grow up! I enroll in performing arts school, which features instruction in acting, voice and dance. Unfortunately, the dance instructor is a middle-aged man who wears tights. Exclusively. To teach a class. Of 12-year-old girls. Not surprisingly, there is much snickering and commenting amongst us, so much so that nearly 20 years later, the thing I remember most vividly about the performing arts school is Katie Newton stage-whispering, "BALLS!" at the start of each dance class.
Also, at my uncle's wedding this year, one of his friends takes pity on gawky 12-year-old me and politely asks me to dance. I grudgingly accept. The experience does nothing to improve my outlook on dancing, but it does launch my career of being every gay man's favorite straight girl escort.
High School: After avoiding nearly four complete years of various school events, I go to my senior prom. With a date. Who still holds a grudge. Ah, good times.
My Wedding (Post-College): I get as far as hearing my mom suggest that the Macarena be on the DJ's playlist before making the decision that there will be absolutely no music and therefore no dancing at my wedding. In a bizarre act of boomerang karma, the Macarena is played everywhere we go during our honeymoon in Mexico.
A few months ago, we went to the wedding of longtime friends. After a couple of hours of Sean giving me sad baby seal looks, I agreed to ONE DANCE, figuring that all of our friends would either be too cool to make a big deal about me breaking my long-standing, well-known anti-dance policy, or be altogether too sloshed to notice.
That dance was the longest two minutes of my life. Fortunately, I was right about people not noticing. (God bless open martini bars!) Unfortunately, I had forgotten about the wedding video. My metronome move is preserved for all posterity, along with my odd expression that visibly communicated the fact that if Sean had suddenly developed a gaping chest wound, I would have crawled inside it to hide.
The good news is that the dance aversion doesn't appear to be genetic. Sophie dances whenever, wherever, to whatever. It doesn't even have to be music as long as it has a decent rhythm. The bad news...that metronome move thing? TOTALLY HEREDITARY.
# posted by Amanda at 3:54 PM |
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