Roundup at Swan Lake

There is a really, really good reason 99% of all Beginning Ballet classes are offered to humans under the age of ten.  Two good reasons, actually, and they're both called 'bunion.'

Today's flickering dream, Principal Ballerina After Retirement, turned out to be just that.  In fact, I'm not sure I could even keep it up as a bizarrely interesting way to exercise.

I took ballet lessons in elementary school.  (I didn't have many flickering dreams back then, but my biggest one - memorizing my locker combination if I got into Junior High - eventually came true.)  I have remembered for decades the graceful maneuvers on a brightly lit stage during my only childhood ballet performance, but wrestling into my purple tights today whisked me back to the truth.

That truth was as ugly as those tights.

There was not a brightly lit stage in the whole state of Wyoming, so the "performance" happened in the living room of an Elks Club member.  The Elk Wife was hosting a meeting of the Does - women married to men who spent their waking hours drinking at the Elks Club.

As a child with a serious inability to battle adults, I could not bring myself to mention that while the female deer is called a 'doe,' the female elk is a 'cow.'  They would have surrounded and stomped me to death at the news, but I figured - based on the combined weight of the herd - the bulls had probably been obliged during less sober moments to let their wives in on that little secret.

My ballet teacher was born and raised in our very small town, but somehow ended up with an oddly French last name.  I suspect she added a few vowels to whatever it used to be, rendering it virtually unpronounceable in a subtly intercontinental way.

Her imagination continued to reside in our very small town.

For the Spring Recital (our only performance that year - reviews were mixed), she had composed a 'piece' that required every girl to dress up like a different bird.  We had everything but a swan.  We also lacked a storyline.  And a plot.

It was an avant-garde performance art piece - something the dancers had never heard of - so we were told to just run through the ballet maneuvers we'd mastered.

That left us with nothing to perform, so we were told to run through the ballet maneuvers we'd made up.  Joyce liked spinning around with her eyes closed, Carolyn liked clomping side-to-side in her sister's toe shoes, and I loved to kick.  My technique incorporated just a hint of slap-stick when accidentally kicking both legs simultaneously.

I donned my least holey midnight ink leotard and played the part of the bluebird, replete with crepe paper wings.  For some crazy reason, I also wore a crown.  Maybe I was Queen of the Least Holey Birds; thankfully, that part flew from my memory early on.

Logistical uh-oh began the instant the show started.  My wings, fashioned from way too much crepe paper, flapped vulture-like as I flew into the small circle of large women and kicked menacingly at their faces.

Those Elk Lady screams were not my fault.

The problem was that we had rehearsed (obviously sans costume) in the slightly larger living room of the ballet teacher's duplex.  Larger because it contained zero furniture.  The woman was trés intercontinental.

So my colorfully feathered friends and I had to slow the choreography down to avoid running out of favorite things to do and renaming our production "Stampede!"

There were awkward pauses while the scary Transylvanian music caught up to me - frozen in mid-kick, panting through bright blue lips.  (During flapping, the crepe paper tended to land on chapped spots I'd licked compulsively all winter.)

Eventually, Darlene (our super-skinny, red-breasted robin) burst into tears and everyone who assumed this signified the end of the 'performance' clapped with gusto.  Including, it seemed, the scary Transylvanian orchestra still spinning away on the record player.

Then all of the adults, starting with my ballet teacher, lit cigarettes and we were off.

Beginning Adult Ballet required participation by muscle groups I'd excused from duty after my last recess.  (Full disclosure:  Today's super nice teacher assured me I had not violated official rules by claiming amateur status, as I had passed the 45-year mark since participation.)  (I still can't challenge adult authority, even if the other adult is 30 years my junior.)

I was the only Beginning Adult registered for today's class, which was more awkward than a baby shower at the Elks Club on a Sunday morning.  Luckily, the instructor's two ballerina friends showed up, along with a young man who'd only had one class.  YAY - another newbie!

He turned out to be a gymnast.

Besides both bunions, other obstacles arose for me at le barre.

Pointing my toes out at unnatural angles was easier as a child.  So was bending at the knees while rotating both hips skyward with one ankle perched somewhere near my head.

At least the music wasn't scary, I got to hear the teacher say a bunch of real French words, and there was plenty of room to kick.

I had nothing to do while lying on my back during 'floor work,' so I tapped my toes to the beat of the hip hop class next door.  My fellow ballerinas did sit-ups - something I'd tried once in eighth grade for the President's Physical Fitness Test, but it didn't work out like I'd hoped.  I may or may not have thrown up.  I'm one of those rare adults that offer up prayers of gratitude for my memory bank's extreme fuzziness.

The adult ballet class grand finale (bonus Italian word) included a little hippity-hopping routine that ended in leg splits.

On purpose.

My thighs watched the first contestant, then crumpled like fainting goats.  I explained that it had been a while since I'd done splits and wanted to sit that one out, which brought smiles all around.  They knew I'd never even contemplated it.

But that's the great thing about a fuzzy memory bank!

Splits may or may not have been my most favorite thing to do.

(Problems with Restless Arm Syndrome?  You're in the right place!  Meet me here next Friday and we'll LEARN TO CROCHET.)

My search is over. (PSYCH!)

For those of you who plan to do Psychic Anything after retirement, I urge you to start now.  Even if you're still in utero.

But ... hold on.  If this is your "calling," fate may have already penciled it in for you!  It should show up on your brain stem's calendar in a dream.  "Destiny - March 29 - 2:15 AM"?  That's it.  (And here you thought you'd scheduled an appointment at a 24-hour pedicure place.)

My "Psychic Development" class was taught by Jamie - a calm, hypnotically commanding woman who believes everyone has psychic abilities begging to be coaxed from moldy hiding places in our right-brain storm sewer systems.  (Pre-paraphrased for your convenience.)

When I signed up, I expected the leader would appear in a purple satin, star-splattered robe and way too much eye shadow.  The fact that Jamie was a regular person means my childhood included entirely too much Bugs Bunny, and a total lack of all things psychic.

Oops.

That is not true.

As if gazing into a crystal ball the size of our teacher's head, I accidentally conjured up an image from the Please-Let's-All-Just-Forget-This Department of my memory.

(Cue the Eerie Organ Music.)

I grew up in rural Wyoming.  The kind of rural that meant my sister Jenny and I looked both ways for stampeding cattle before crossing the dirt road where our school bus tossed us each afternoon.

My sister Debby graduated from high school in the late sixties and moved to California - the bravest thing I'd witnessed in my whole ten years.  She returned one summer in a car that was loaded down with incense and driven by a husband named Paul.

Like I said.  She was brave.

It took a decade for happenings on either coast to penetrate our state's borders, so we hadn't heard much about hippie people before Debby and Paul arrived.  Paul also redefined the term "exotic" since he was our town's first import who had lived in New York and California.  He was practically European!

Debby and Paul were vegetarian so nobody could figure out how they were still alive.  A group of local ranch wives, The Fremont County Cow Belles, held prayer vigils in case the young couple's affliction was contagious.  Every time either of them had as much as a sniffle, my father would smack his forehead and say, "Eat a hamburger!"

They brought a waterbed from California, too.  I should not tell you what my father said about that.

So they settled in with the ranchers and hunters, in spite of their gathering ways.  They had my nephew, Cutest Baby On The Whole Planet (we called him Joshua for short), and things seemed okay - until they got weird.

(Volume UP on the Eerie Organ Music.)

One day, for reasons I still can't divine, Paul explained auras to me.  He talked with big, wavy arm motions and eyebrow crescendos about seeing what others were feeling.  Like a mood ring shaped as a force field - but neither of those concepts had yet migrated to Wyoming, either.  (And, unfortunately for everyone, I was still comfy in my cocoon of adolescent ignorance.)

I freaked completely out.

I believed Californians had Special Spooky Vision and when I broke this news to my parents, Paul got in big trouble.

Then I was really worried.  Who knew it was even POSSIBLE to get an adult in trouble?  All I wanted was for my parents to agree that Paul was crazy and to promise they'd continue telling me what I was thinking when I needed to know.

But Paul's Special Spooky Vision didn't show him how sorry I was, and the idea to tell him out loud never surfaced.  I hoped my aura would hit on the right color.

No dice.

Which leads me back to today's class.

(Eerie Organ Music OFF.)

No crystal ball, but plenty of talk about auras and chakras and channeling and my Sponge Brain was happy to soak it all up.  I've decided "scary" takes on a whole new meaning if you survive high school.

I stared at Jamie until I could see her aura.  It told me she was kind and loving.  I looked around the room; my classmates' auras told me the same thing.  It was thrilling - I had my new hobby!

The truth hit after class when the aura of every person on the street chirped, "I'm kind and loving, too!"  The odds against this in our downtown area are astronomical.

I also remembered that auras don't have special speaking abilities - nor are they scratch-n-sniff.  They just cling to people like pleasantly colored fog, even if the wearer is in a road-rage scented mood.

The session ended with each of us doing a "reading" on a classmate.  I flunked the class.  Developing my psychic ability as a post-retirement hobby would be a full-time job from which I'd surely be fired. 

Just write down everything that comes to you as you sit quietly with this person, Jamie told us.

I stared into the eyes of the gentleman to my left for three whole minutes and doubted every single thought that came to me.  I made up his life story, which my brain quite naturally turned into an after-school special starring someone other than the man himself.

My psychic ability had shifted into reverse!

I worried about hurting his feelings, so I spent most of my three minutes storing every wrinkled detail of his face in my right brain's storm sewer system.

I finally scribbled down random words, and he was nice enough to nod and smile as I read the list out loud.

WOW!  Did I get it right?  Was he the salty sea captain of a high-speed barge loaded with stolen orthopedic flip-flops that caught fire off the coast of Uruguay?

No.  He was not.

He was, however, uncannily perceptive.  His list after staring at my eyeballs included "uncomfortable with fluorescent lighting," "wishes she knew how to dance," and - strangely enough - "kind and loving."

If my search for the perfect hobby ever includes a portraiture class, I hope this same gentleman shows up in the chair to my left.

I have an inner feeling I'll do an awful job drawing wrinkles, and a real strong hunch he'll be pleased with the results.

(What are you doing next Friday?  Want to learn about BEGINNING ADULT BALLET?  I knew it!  Maybe I AM psychic!  See you then.)

Let's Fling Bling!

I do not wear much of anything that qualifies as 'adornment.'  Sure, there are people who dislike jewelry - but I just forget that I own jewelry until I'm at least 30 minutes away from home.  I do remember my favorite bracelet each morning if I leave it on the handle of my toothbrush at bedtime.

When I got my first bra in fifth grade I kept forgetting to wear it.  Maybe because I needed one about as much as Orphan Annie did, but - hey!  Totally beside the point.

I'd get to school and be so mad at myself when I woke all the way up and found I was wearing NOTHING.  (Just my giant shoes with some thick, pilly tights under a bunched-up skirt - clingy in spite of a full slip - and an undershirt under my sweater.)

Nothing!

(And a headband.)

I wrote cryptic messages on my palm: "Find b _ _ and put next to toothbrush tonight."

At this writing, I still forget my deodorant at least every other day.

The main reason I signed up for this class was to see what the heck organic jewelry meant.  After many years as a nurse, I thought I'd already been intimately acquainted with most forms of organic material.  It often presented itself as "jewelry" from trauma patients - draped around my neck, clinging to my wrists, and/or hanging from my ears.

Rose, our instructor, was so nice!  Only in her early twenties - she started making jewelry ten years ago because she hates shopping.

She sported a myriad of tattoos, several interesting piercings, an asymmetrical haircut, magenta fingernail polish that was seriously chipped from playing the ukulele, and wore a moonstone pendant she'd made hours earlier in the bathtub.

I wanted to be her.

On display were large containers divided into compartments, each brimming with brightly colored treasure.  Rose encouraged the class to take whatever "spoke" to us.

I prayed the worst things in those boxes might be large teeth from, say, an extra-old elk.  Perhaps some tiny bones from an animal that had gone on to its reward organically, and maybe a few long hairs generously donated by a horse looking to manage an unruly mane. 

My relief was palpable when I discovered that 'organic' also means 'rocks' - which had been polished, drilled, and turned into beautiful little beads!  I'd avoid the embarrassment that Wilma Flintstone surely felt whenever she stepped out of that pedal car wearing her chunky statement necklace long before statements were even invented.

I stared at the beads, unable to imagine how they would look as jewelry, even when lined up end-to-end on the table.  I am beyond 'literal.'  I need to have string through each bead and clasps on each end before I can possibly fathom a final result.

Suddenly, I envied Wilma Flintstone.  My own embarrassment would be the result of Flagrant Sub-par Imagination!  When I stepped out of my car, total strangers would chase me down to save the world from the thing around my neck.

I would definitely point out to those strangers that my feet don't get dirty from driving my car.  Then I'd answer their other questions.  Yes, I need this bra.  No, I'm not sure if that body odor is coming from me.

Two little girls in class didn't like any of the approximately four hundred thousand beads, so Rose dug through a magic bag and found several earring-wire-ready guitar picks.  These picks were not locally grown.  They may have been harvested near the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, because the girls went a little crazy when they appeared.

If only my problems could be solved so easily!  Perhaps Rose had something in that magic bag for my lack of creativity?  No.

First, I made a necklace for my mother, Pearl.  It had exactly five ingredients.  There were three long flat pieces of Mother of Pearl.  Yup.  (You want irony?  I have got it in spades.)

That little bit-o-loveliness was threaded on a piece of safety pin (metal + organic = who knew?) and strung on waxed black string.  Please.  Hold your applause!

I messed up the black string measurements, though, so the "jewels" hung down slightly off - an effect remedied by a very tiny tilt of the head.  Problem solved.  The Leaning Tower of Pearl was complete.

If you squint, those things become ACTUAL ELK TEETH!

One young man made a bracelet for his mother.  She promised not to ruin the surprise by peeking, but every time her son lost his grip on the pliers, she was smacked by a flying cross.

Surprise!

I chose some very safe organic material and made a very neutral bracelet for my girlfriend, Joan.  She loved it.  A major problem arose, however, when she put it on her wrist and discovered it was almost long enough to be a choker.  But not quite.

I had just felt so creative adding beads to that string that I could not stop!

Something tells me this is not my retirement hobby.  For starters, I don't know many people willing to pretend to love these creations enough to actually wear them.

The decorative end thingies on Joan's bracelet had already been crimped (by Rose - it was the most technical part of the project) so I had no way to take out a couple of the stones.

Instead, I showed Joan how to hold her arm up, fingers splayed, so the bracelet wouldn't slip all the way off.  I reminded her about the hundreds of Saturday mornings she surely spent the same way I did in the 1960s - sharpening pre-adult skills by practicing whatever happened on television.

I told her to close her eyes and think about Wilma exiting that pedal car, chunky-braceleted arm always in the air - checking her hair, hailing a taxisaurus, waving excitedly at her very best friend.

(What's up next Friday?  Oh, just a little class you probably already knew I was going to report on:  PSYCHIC DEVELOPMENT.)

Just The Facts, Ma'am.

I wonder how celebrities realize it's time to spill their awful secrets in a memoir, which - let's be honest - is a bit like inviting everyone who reads books to your own funeral.  Wouldn't you feel awful for the people who had baked beanie-weenie casseroles and soaked several hankies before finding out you're still alive?

Maybe someday we'll have friendly little mini-pre-funerals.  They'll be announced on those refrigerator magnet Save-the-Date cards as "Life - So Far" or "Here's How It's Going."  Rehearsal funerals.

Oh, wait.  We already have those!  They're called Frat Parties.  (Stay far away from the casseroles.)

Perhaps the decision to write about one's life has more to do with memory loss.  Not the kind where you record humorous pleasantries for posterity before they slip away.  The kind where you forget how embarrassed you'll be when the world reads about being launched from an escalator that screeched to a halt at a Scottsdale mall and sent you tumbling, wearing nothing but that poofy yellow sundress.

(Here's hoping the other shoppers only vaguely remember a screaming sun diving into the ocean, followed freakishly closely by a full moon.)

I'm willing to bet there are an awful lot of ghost writers in this world, because to capture the kind of memoir a total stranger might buy, you'd have to pay someone to feed you wine and write down everything you say.  Otherwise, your book would contain what you pretend to be embarrassed about - like the time you got kicked out of high school Home Ec class for deciding to make black polyester lederhosen when the assignment was floral cotton apron.

(My heart still *pings* with rebel pride.)

I felt like a cheater signing up for "Pen Your Memoir" as my first workshop; I love to write and the whole Sponge Brain Stretch Pants project is devoted to the discovery of new things.  So I decided this course was a palate cleanser - like those little scoops of sherbet that arrive between courses of a heavy meal.

My sherbet just arrived as an appetizer.

We had a stellar instructor.  Smart, funny, PUBLISHED - it was shaping up to be a super-productive day until we got to the actual writing part (about five minutes into the presentation).  Every other person in attendance whipped out paper ranging in size from "Write-Santa-A-Letter" all the way to "Big-Chief-Legal."

Apparently, I had assumed there would be handouts.  Maybe those full-color photocopied stacks of entire PowerPoint presentations that I despise so much - and I could just scribble on those.  I'd be mistaken for an experienced writer, never at a loss for a place to put my words because the world is my writing oyster!  

I was at a loss for a place to put my words.

I've never been comfortable interrupting people's lives to introduce myself, and although I can imagine that tapping a total stranger's scapula and asking for their stuff is an excellent way to break the ice, that move just reeks of amateur.  My classmates would describe me in their memoirs as that weirdo who ruined the whole creative vibe and single-handedly derailed several best sellers.

I looked through my 'purse' - actually a wrist-clutch-type situation I've been carrying since my real purse that I loved with all my heart was stolen from my car at a dog park, of all places, in order for the Universe to teach me that I was too attached to material things.  New iPhone - vanished.  Prescription sunglasses - history.  Buttery-soft leather wallet - poof!  The Universe was right.

(Note to all:  Before leaving home tomorrow, close your eyes and try naming every single material thing, including those 478 pieces of paper in your wallet, to a policeman who Doesn't Have All Day.  It doubles as a killer party game in a pinch!)

While my classmates waited patiently for instruction, pens poised over veritable FIELDS of paper, I rifled through my clutch and discovered the world's smallest notebook.  I'd read somewhere that writers need these to record all those heart-stopping story ideas that come flying out of left field.  So I had stashed this teensy pink variety, pictured here with my favorite shade of lipstick for size comparison. 

There were exactly eight tiny pages available behind the great story ideas I had already recorded.  (Sample great story idea:  "Ask Melanie for that spinach soup recipe."  So far, it's still in the Formulation Stage.)

For some idiotic reason - maybe an awkward self-defense plan involving the next thief, my wristlet 'purse' also held a big fat Sharpie.  I clenched my jaw and tried not to think about the sleek, gold pen that had disappeared at the dog park.

Our instructor announced the assignment:  Describe an event that helped you realize you were changed for the better after a loss.

The rest of the class sat stunned.  They stared up at the ceiling or down at their giant blank pages, double-daring an idea to come flying out of left field.

Amateurs.

I arranged my facial features in what I hoped approximated reflection.  My shoulders slumped gracefully in an Emily Dickensonian way, but without the consumptive cough.

I focused intently on the empty lines of my pretend notebook until the image of all that shattered glass in the parking lot dissolved completely.

With true memoirist's resolve, I wrestled the cap off the Sharpie.  Employing quick, lilting movements (so as not to soak a big, black blob through even one precious page) I composed a little piece I'm hoping to publish on a billboard one day.

It starts like this:  Thank You For Not Taking My Dog.

(Next Friday we'll check out Organic Jewelry Making together!  Subtitle:  You Want Me To Wear This Around My NECK?)