Dance: A Fart-Form.

For fifteen years, I partook in an activity that I absolutely hated. Once a week, for a decade and a half, I was shoved into Ms.Barb's dance studio by some sort of invisible mocking hand. Armed with three pairs of dance shoes, two left feet and zero friends, I was rather ill-equipped to handle the hour and a half session. So what was it that made me so unappealing in the eyes of my fellow "dancers"? Was it my signature Oscar the Grouch face and ominous glare? Was it my ripped tights, too small leotard or my inability to remember to wear a bra during jumping exercises? 
Dance class gave me an ultimatum. I could continue to take the low road and embarrass myself and the other 29 members with my bad attitude and poor dancing, OR I could become, one of them. If you've ever seen me dance in a club, in a bar or in my shower, you'll understand that I took the low road. I jump up and down and wave my hands around in the air. My dancing looks similar to the scene in "My Girl" when the little boy is trying not to get stung by bees. The only difference is that I don't die at the end, (although I'm sure a lot of people on the dance floor wished that I had.) But it's not all bad news for me on the dance floor. For all of the guys who think that 'dancing' means sneaking up behind a girl and trying to sodomize her through her clothes, my dancing comes in handy. My up and down motion transforms me into a lethal weapon. I head-butt anyone who comes within a 2 foot radius of me. 

Not once in my fifteen years at Ms.Barb's dance studio did I ever wish to be like the other girls. There's  nothing worse than a bunch of white suburban bitches trying to dance with the same intensity of a black woman to Will Smith's, "Miami." There's something unnatural about a white girl from Guilderland doing a body roll and booty shake to one of Ms.Barb's family friendly rap songs. Adding to my uncomfortability in the dance studio was the fact that the entire room was like one big bad acid trip. Ms.Barb's obsession with penguins was evident in the bathroom, changing room and dance room. Hundreds of fake penguins lined the shelves and the floors. 30 girls in black tights and leotards jumped in line. Their hair whipped from side to side with the wind created by their spins. The small container filled with ponytail holders in the corner was never quite what it seemed. There was a hologram on the top of the container and if you glanced at it, it looked like a huge caterpillar. But if you really studied it, you saw that it was actually a group of ballet dancers clothed in white satin. As if this wasn't bad enough, the room always had the same odor of farts, B.O and cheap perfume. This dance studio is the only place that I know of where you enter sober and exit fucked up without the use of drugs or alcohol.

So why'd I do it? The group of girls I danced with would be referred to by nice people as "Chatty-Cathy's." Fortunately, I'm not very nice. I just choose to coin them with the term, "C U Next Tuesday's." I think that half of me wanted "danced for 15 years" written on my college resume. For all that the college knew, I could have been the best dancer in there. I could have been the assistant teacher. But I think that the other half of me wanted to see how long I could last there. I wanted to test my mental strength. The obligation I felt to go to dance class was no different than the obligation I felt about emptying the garbage or taking my dog for a walk out in the cold weather. While many girls cry during their last recital, I found myself leaving early to beat the evening rush at Subway. I didn't want to dance, but I had to prove something to myself. It was my own self-induced chinese water torture, only the taps I heard weren't from water, they were from shoes. A far worse punishment if you ask me.