It all started with a purple tutu, mom's lipstick and a pointed toe slamming against the stage while the audience cooed for the duration of The Good Ship Lollipop.""
I danced in my first recital when I was only 3, but I didn't get serious about it until I hit early adolescence. I danced for the same reason most seventh grade girls do anything - popularity and taming the four feet of awkward mass beneath my neck.
However, the more hours I put into it, the more I started to genuinely like dancing. Sadly, after I came to college, I just never found the time to continue.
Recently, I realized how much I missed my dance classes for the past two years and decided to take up a class at a nearby studio.
Unfortunately, on my first day, I discovered my twinkle-toed peers didn't exceed 13 years in age.
I decided to stick with it anyway. I was there to dance, not make friends, but about 10 minutes into warmups, I glimpsed into the mirror and came face to face with my self-hating teenage alter ego.
Suddenly, it all came rushing back to me - the hours in front of the mirror asking why God hated me enough to give me curly hair, not knowing which breast would be bigger on any given morning and hoping I wouldn't accidentally talk to someone I was supposed to be ignoring that week.
Being in the same room with so much undeveloped estrogen seemed to regress my own. Instead of feeling that small bit of self-assurance I've finally come to find in my 20s, while I'm in the studio, all I can remember is how much I hated the strange way my hair parts, and that my short legs give me the appearance of an oompa loompa.
Strangely, snapping back into reality was a lot more difficult than it should have been. I had to actively remind myself I was really 21 years old when I began to ask the most coolest girl in the entire studio - she had sparkle stickers - if she wanted to come to my birthday party.
When she told me she could only come if my parents were home and if there weren't any R-rated movies in the house, it hit me that her parents probably wouldn't approve of the six handles of vodka I had picked up earlier in the week for the bash.
Realizing my efforts were fruitless, and sort of inappropriate, I silently handed her the note asking if her friend Jimmy thinks maybe I'm kind of cute, and quickly walked home to change for the bars.
The teacher-student relationship also messes with my head. I never thought I'd have to get reacquainted with a world where I have to have permission to go to the bathroom.
Even the conversation has a juvenile taint.
""Jessica just had her baby!"" the teacher said of another instructor.
""Wow, I didn't even know she was married!"" one of the girls responded.
Silence.
""Well, you don't have to be married to have a baby,"" the teacher explained.
The girls all looked awkwardly at one another, and then accusingly at me, as if I had something to do with this blasphemous act.
I considered telling them they're only a few years away from drunken sex with strangers, where their dancing skills will be put to good use, and during which at least a couple of them will end up pregnant like poor Jessica, but I decided against it.
Dancing allows for a mind-body connection strong enough to overcome any teenage girl's insecurities. It can give her a sense of confidence normally unknown at that age. And, whether they end up curly haired or knocked up, that is something I wish for all of them.
If you're reading this Jimmy, I think you're cuter than Zac Efron, e-mail me at wiatrak@wisc.edu._
