Tap Dancing
Me: 14 years old and in the middle of a growth spurt (the summer I grew three inches in three months). I'm tall and lanky, figuring out my long, awkward body.
This is the summer between seventh and eighth grade. I am living with my dad and step-mom in White Hall, Arkansas, a town just outside of Pine Bluff, a city known for the horrendous smell emanating from the paper mill.
My step-mom is hounding my sister and I to do something besides watch tv and eat pickles all day. But we have no friends and, literally, nowhere to go. So she enrolls us in a tap dancing class for older adults. The class consists of two men over sixty, my step-mom, my sister, and me.
So there's me, as described above, in a tank top and beginners sports bra, teal and purple umbro soccer shorts, athletic socks scrunched around my ankles, and size 10 black patent leather mary jane tap shoes.
I quit after two classes.
January 18, 2008