Cutting Edge Of Dance

S and I had just turned into the hallway as I went on with my saga of the MTA and Bad Ticket Puncher Man (still) when Jean approached and asked S if she was still speaking to her after the double no at the end of last class. At which, I started laughing and S said it was okay and I enjoyed it. Then S brought up Cassanova Cowboy and I said it was a Carrie Underwood song and Jean, totally not planning on ever teaching that, explained that at the beach, the instructor kept doing all the dances her own class knew and wasn't doing any of the new stuff and she again said that she did not want to teach old stuff. I said that I kinda wished the woman at the beach had actually taught those dances, and Jean agreed, and said again, We do the new stuff here.

So, pumped from the pep talk and knowing that we are on the cutting edge of dance, we took our new place at the front of the class. One woman who has a problem catching onto dances came up behind us and told us we dance well. Neither one of us really knows how to respond to that. S said, it's fun. I nodded. Then tall lady with the clip in the middle of her head came in with a clip in the middle of her head. This time, it was holding a nubbin of a ponytail. God, I love this class.

Three of the Clique members were there. One of them, the outspoken one, kept messing up the dance we were learning. I really liked the dance until S pointed out that it was long. We have been doing some pretty long dances. Still, it was fun. There was kicking and swaying and a whole lot of turning while stepping, so it was intricate in some places. Because we no longer stand in the back, the Clique has no one to look at when they turn. The outspoken one first said that they could leave that to the kids, meaning us. Then she said the little ones or the young ones need to be in the back. S asked if next week we would be fetuses. I think so. Really, we are not that much younger than them, but every year we get younger. It's like a Benjamin Button loophole.

We relearned Burlesque, which is a tango. S and I swear that Jean took something out of it because something just seemed missing. We remembered it all, though. And that's when I heard the jingling. S had change in her pocket so I was like, What's going on, Jingles? At the same time, I was getting hot so I took off my sweater and she saw I was wearing a white shirt with red stripes. So she kept calling me Waldo. To be clear, Waldo wears a red and white striped shirt. My shirt was white with a few red stripes across it, clearly not a Waldo shirt. To be clear, the change kept jingling in Granny Jingle's pocket.

We learned a dance that involved a charleston and I loved it. Of course I don't remember its name. I think, however, it's a classic. Aside from the cutting edge top of the chart dances, we do the classic dances.

Which is why we wound up dancing Hello, Dolly for the 45 thousandth time at the end of class with not much time to teach the people who did not know it. I'm not sure if it's a classic dance or if it's still at the top of the charts. Maybe it's been on the charts for so long that now it is classic. In either case, we danced it. I could do that dance with my eyes closed and my ears plugged. Just a poke is all I need to go straight through without thinking.

Because she felt Jean now felt guilty, S decided to request one more song. The one song we did last semester that I hated the most was Long Slow Stupid Dance. That might not be the official name of it, but that's how I remember it. S liked it to begin with and every time she did it, she liked it even more because I hate it. So she went right up to Jean and was demanded, Long Slow Stupid Dance! And Jean was like, Yes! That one we'll definitely do! Let me write it down! And then, in an unprecedented move, Jean went and wrote it down. Which means, come Tuesday, I'll be doing pirouettes in my head to distract myself from Long Slow Stupid Dance until we move onto Cabalero once more.