I Can't Dance

The very earliest thing I wanted to be when I grew up was not a princess. Not a nurse. Not a mommy.

I wanted to be a mermaid.

I was likely four years old and I had a mermaid ritual

• I sat in a corner.
• I draped my legs with a black velvet skirt.
• I didn't move.
• I didn't talk.

Mermaids don't talk. I think my mother loved this game.

Eventually I outgrew that career choice, but something about that time has stayed with me. Mermaids don't talk, they don't walk.

They don't dance.

I've never seen myself as graceful. Never been introduced as graceful, either. I've been the eldest, the oldest, the youngest.

I've been early, late, smart, serious. I've been a quick learner, stubborn, dramatic, calm.

Determined, cautious, night owl, loyal. Klutz, clumsy, hazard, accident-waiting-to-happen.

Never graceful.

In fact, my parents had a charmingly affectionate nickname for me: Klu. What makes it charming is that it's short for the real nickname: Klutz.

Nice.

You name it, I've probably dropped it. I was the girl with one braid unraveled, one knee sock at half-mast. Never failed: back in the day when we wore skirts or dresses EVERY DAY to school (yes, I went to elementary school when girls were not allowed to wear pants to class) I invariably scraped my knee the last week of summer and started the new grade with a hideous knee-scab.

Once, while I had a broken wrist in a cast, I fell down the steps and broke a picture window. With the cast.

Clumsy girls don't dance.

They can't be taught, so there's no use in asking for dance class! Why spend money we don't have on something that won't work?

Girls that bump into things try to do better. They balance books on their heads and practice walking without tipping the book onto the floor.

They learn that ballerinas pretend to have a string from their head to the sky, and then they try to walk like a ballerina, standing tall.

Those girls watch Cinderella (the REAL Cinderella with Lesley Anne Warren) and practice holding their chin up high so they will have a swan neck like hers and maybe then they can dance at the ball.

But, really, does that make it better? Can they dance? Well, it didn't work for me.

Oh, I went to dances. Hello. I was in high school during the 70's. Saturday Night Fever.

I practiced the Hustle before it became a movie in 2013. During the last dance in the basement of the Lincoln Place church on Mifflin Road, held firmly in the against a soggy, tight Qiana shirt with a silkscreened image of a soaring eagle and a flared collar?

Sure.

It's just that I wanted to be Donna Summers. I wanted to be Rita Moreno dancing and singing on the roof. Julie Andrews on the mountain top. Cinderella at the ball.

During my senior year I was in the class play. Singing. Dancing in a group. Oh, how I practiced!

Between scenes I watched kids practice their routines. I wondered how it would feel to move like that? How it was possible to look so relaxed? Yes, I knew they practiced, in many cases had practiced for years.

But they moved like it was breathing.

The picture above is from my prom. My date, Lee, was cool. (Still is.) He had rhythm: he was a DRUMMER. (Told you he was cool.) I never told him I couldn't dance. I never told him I was Klu. Do you know what I did?

I danced. To so many songs. All night.

Even at the after-prom.

My feet felt like they were on fire, then freezing, then I never felt them at all. And maybe I was a bit like Hans Christian Anderson's mermaid that night:

"though each time her foot touched the floor it seemed as if she trod on sharp knives."

I don't dance often now. But when I do I am always happy. Just like I was at the prom, dancing like a person that knew how to dance. Moving for the joy of it.

• I've danced at weddings.
• I've danced at concerts.
• I've danced for skits at work.

Always when I dance it's with friends. Friends that, until now, probably didn't know I can't dance. I've never told them.

Mermaids don't talk.

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