Greetings gentle readers!

Puddin Face is a joy and a delight and I’m more in love with her every day. She’s starting to giggle now and you can bet the farm I’m doing everything in my power during her waking hours to hear it as often as possible. Since I can dork it up proper, I’m graced with it many times a day. It just doesn’t get any better than that!

Now, for the long-awaited Mayor-blog from the archives: The Non-Safety Dance!

This one jumps us back in the time machine quite a ways…..taking us to my high school debut….*cough* years ago.

But first! Random backup factage!
When I was a tot, my dream was to be a professional figure skater. I started my career at the ripe old age of 6, however, and was discouraged from pursuing my Olympic dream.
“People who end up in the Olympics are skating before they can walk!” I was told. I never bothered to debate the logistics of this at this time.

My next logical move was to gymnastics…..and despite being on the tall side I got rather proficient at it. An overzealous game of ‘tackle’ with a certain sibling (hint: I only have one) left me at age 13 without the ability to do the splits any longer. (short version: my left hip got knocked out of joint). I’ll say no more about it. He knows what he did.

Anyway! Ultimately I ended up with figure-skating’s less-exciting third cousin, dance. That is where we pick up the story….freshman year….high school….modern dance class.

Now you ever, like, find yourself going along quite nicely, thank you very much, and even gaining a sense of confidence in your craft, until a seemingly-offhand comment throws you into a tailspin?

That’s kinda what we’re talking about here.

Now as I said, I’m on the tall side for these things at 5’8″, but that never discouraged me. I embraced the Dance for all it was worth, and thought I was getting rather good at it. My instructor apparently thought so, too….when one day she bestowed upon me the highest honor of dance class: choreographing and teaching the class a particular dance for our show/extravaganza/don’t-call-it-a-recital.

Huzzah! I was sooooo stoked. I knew exactly what dance I wanted to do, too…..(and this is where the year will become exceedlingly apparent)….the dance from the Thriller video.

Yeah, I said it!!

Back when Michael Jackson had his original nose. Some young girls thought he was extremely good-looking. Some young girls even saved up their hard-earned babysitting money to purchase Thriller on vinyl. But I’m not naming names. Ahem.

So, yeah. Watched the video approximately 736 times. Learned the dance. Choreographed said dance and began to teach it to the class. One day my instructor came up to me and gave me a compliment on how things were progressing. Then she looked at me in my lovely leotard and said “My goodness you’re about 3/4 legs! They’re so long I’m amazed you have such great control over them!”

Can you smell where this is going?

You know what comments like that DO, doncha? They infiltrate. They fester. They absorb only to secrete later at the most inopportune times.

My inopportune time came the very next day. Now some of you reading this may actually be old enough to recall the infamous Thriller video but for those who aren’t….there is a flying leap at one point in the dance. (Is that smell getting stronger?)

Now honestly what happened next most likely has more than one cause…the offhand comment being one of them. The other one being….the location of our rehearsal. Being a high school, our options were limited, so we practiced on the stage. Nice hardwood floor. Lots of room.

Cue me, the supreme dork, leading the pack the day we were learning the BIG LEAP. Everything went swimmingly right up until the moment of the leap. In fact, the leap itself went off without a hitch. It wasn’t until I tried to take my next step that chaos ensued.

My big toe, you see, had landed in one of the many light-sockets embedded in the stage floor. I realized this several moments after the fact.

First, I tried to take my next step and failed to realize I was caught.
Next, I faceplanted on the nice hardwood floor so hard that the entire stage shook (this was gathered from eyewitness testimony).
Awareness of this factlet, however, came slowly. I honestly don’t think I would recommend falling that hard. All I recall directly was hearing a tremendous BOOM!!!!! almost as if from a distance.

“Wow,” I thought, “someone wiped out big time!”
It wasn’t until I opened my eyes facedown on the floor that I realized it was, in fact, myself that was wiping the floor with my face. I was that stunned.

And yes, my teeth hurt for like a week or something.
And yes, everyone from dance class immortalized my fall from grace in my yearbook that year.

And yes, it still haunts me.

And yes, it’s still damn funny.

You’re welcome.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 18th, 2006 at 1:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.