Wow, you can't really dance!

Dancing is supposed to be a voluntary (or involuntary) reaction to hearing good music, otherwise known as ‘bangers’. I love to dance when I know no one is watching and can tolerate being watched only when adequately buzzed. I think my moves are an amalgam of tasteful vogue-ish poses, hip hop two-step and spastic twitching. It all looks very elegant, I assure you. Perhaps my unease with dancing in public stemmed from an ill-fated event in my childhood.

Heaven forbid this is still the case, but in the late 90s and early 00s the Ontario physical education curriculum consisted of your regular athletic torture and a dance component. I recall line dancing to “Boot Scootin’ Boogie”, doing the pointy finger thing to “Stayin’ Alive”, and there may have been something mildly resembling the electric slide. Then to top all this embarrassing torture off there was the dance. Forcing 10-year-old kids to hang around in groups of 4-5, choreograph a dance to the latest 00s bangers, and then perform those dances in front of the entire grade is kid cruelty. Students in grades 5-8 could expect to endure this sadistic experience that would haunt them for the rest of their lives, especially at 3am when one’s cringiest moments replay in the mind like a supercut. I’m exaggerating a bit. It wasn’t all that bad, and some students, the popular pretty ones, had a lot of fun. I, a chubby black girl, usually one of the 1-3 black kids in any class at any given time, did not.

I was paired with three girls: Kate, Jessica, and Amanda. Kate and Jessica were part of the squad. Think of Kate Sanders and her posse from Lizzie McGuire. Amanda was shy, quiet, and if memory serves, one of the smartest kids in my class. She was short and elfish. I had no idea if Amanda could dance, but I assumed that between the four of us, I would definitely be the odd duck. If any of them were annoyed or hesitant to have me in their group, they hid it well. With the class split into little groups, the four of us sat in a circle on the gym floor. I trailed the dust around with my fingers, happy to be sitting instead of doing any number of exercises that exposed how uncoordinated and unathletic I was. My ill-fitting Value Village gym clothes didn’t help either. Kate and Jessica made all the decisions right then. We would dance to *NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye”. The banger had just come out, and everyone was crushing on Justin Timberlake. We spent the rest of the gym period musing about the *NSYNC vs. Backstreet Boys discourse. It turned out that Amanda wasn’t all that shy, and was in fact, very friendly and just as nervous as I was. Kate took our numbers after school and promised that we would all practice at her house. That never happened. I never got a call. And then I got sick.

I was prone to strep throat, bouts of depression and panic attacks, indigestion, ennui, and flus of all sorts. Two weeks before the performance, Kate said that she and Jessica had finished the choreography, and Amanda and I would come over soon to learn it. A week later I was in bed with strep throat, a high fever and an ear infection. In my suffering I assumed that, at the very least, the flu would linger long enough to get me out of the performance, a day that hovered in my imagination like the Apocalypse, when my uncoolness would be revealed. As fortune would have it, I did get better. It was Saturday when my parents announced that I was healthy enough to go back to school, and in time for Monday’s performance.

To make things fair Mrs. Forsythe said that she would pick the teams at random. There was enough time in the gym period for all groups to go, so there was no hope of any kind of delay. I tried a parley. I pled with her, explained my situation, I even promised her a parent or doctor’s note. I assured her that my lack of preparation would only hurt my team’s score, a mature and wise argument for a 10-year-old to make. Mrs. Forsythe did not take the bait. I couldn’t blame her; I usually had some sort of convenient excuse or situation right before gym class. A few groups went. I watched the clock. Then we were up.

Kate and Jessica donned dark blue capri pants, pale blue t-shirt shirts with butterfly patterns, and blue bandanas. They had matching Puma shoes. Amanda wore her usual all black gym getup, and as the music started, its slow melodramatic electronic strings composition leading into the first lyric: “hey, hey,” I realized- Amanda had no idea what the hell was going on either. We looked at each other, stationed behind our cruel leaders. When the first “Bye bye bye” blared from the stage speakers, Kate and Jessica’s heads snapped up in unison. Amanda and I fended for ourselves. When Kate and Jessica switched places, Amanda and I switched places. When they did a spin, we did a spin, always off the beat and 5 seconds delayed, which made us look like slow shadows. The choreography itself was exactly what you’d expect from preteens who watched too many pop music videos.

In the final moments of what must’ve felt like eternity, I looked over at Amanda. She had tears in her eyes. That’s when I noticed the snickers, sneers, pointing and chuckles. I didn’t know why I hadn’t noticed them before. One rather vicious bully, Kyle, was laughing, clutching his side. Our dance ended in a backbend. As “bye bye” echoed for the last time, Kate and Jessica reached backwards, forcing Amanda and I to jump back. Amanda turned out to be quite flexible and folded herself without problems. I stood, looked around, and unable to do a full backbend, bent myself into as small a pretzel shape as I could manage. It was over. Screw you, Justin, I thought. Amanda snapped up, unfolding herself and ran out of the gym in tears. Kate and Jessica slapped hands, looked over their shoulders at me, and walked over to the rest of their smug posse. It was an orchestrated mean girl attack! How could they? I looked around at the faces. Many were still laughing, but the nerdiest among us were visibly afraid. The fear hung heavy in the air. It was the fear of those at the mercy of the unpopular, those destined to be bullied and mocked for entertainment.

“Wow,” Kyle said, “you really can’t dance at all.” He made a sad womp womp womp soundtrack as I, crestfallen, hobbled over to the corner. Laughter erupted once again as Mrs. Forsythe prepared to call on the next group. I grabbed a tennis ball from the storage room and sat crossed legged on the floor. Alone in my corner, the worst of it behind me, I bounced the tennis ball with controlled rage, and I plotted my revenge.