Step Ball Change

Back when I was ten, I was forced into tap dance lessons. Forced. Totally against my will. It was an effort to make me 'graceful'. If you actually know me, you understand that this attempt was a total failure.

Holy Hell.

Thirty years before, my mother asked for dance lessons. Instead she was given a piano and lessons for years. When I asked for piano lessons, the piano was sold. Because, 'I'd never practice'. And yet she seemed shocked when I didn't practice tap...

There were five kids at the start of the class. Just two of us stayed the whole year and were in the recital. I remember standing there - an angry, hands on hips smart-assed ten year old staring at the teacher, refusing to move my feet.  (I'm certain she hated me right back, rightly so.) Our first steps were to Dipsy Doodle. In 1986. Dipsy Doodle.

I fractured my ankle that year. You'd think that four weeks in a cast would have gotten me out of tap, but no. She drug me right on down to the studio, where I sat in a chair and practiced. Tap shoe on my left foot, bulky cast on my right foot.

Step, ball, change.

I was desperate. I had to get out. I went to my only possible option. Grandma. I was on the green stool in the kitchen while she cooked dinner - the best time to have a BIG conversation. And then I begged.

Her response, "Give it time. It will be fun. I'm sure the music is modern and something you like. It's not like you're learning to dance to Dipsy Doodle."

Um, actually... 

My last hope. Dashed.

As you can imagine, the recital was a total disaster. Grandma was wise enough to not attend. We moved soon after. Probably unrelated.

And nearly 30 years later. Guess what I'm doing? Taking tap dance lessons on Friday nights.

So shocking to some of my friends, that when I was asked to join in on a Friday night girls night out, and said I could, but it would be after 8:30 when my tap dance class was over, one burst out laughing. In her defense, I'm sarcastic most of the time and she had no idea that I was serious.

Know what? Tap dancing is f***ing hard. It's a super challenge. I will beat it. I will be in the recital. I will own that dance.

Own.

And, my mother is going to pay for it. She just doesn't know it yet.