In the middle of yoga today I was doing the Bound-Ankle Pose and it reminded me of my years of ballet lessons when I was a kid, because the ballet teacher used to ask us to get in the same exact position while watching TV, to improve our “turnout.”  Turnout when she said it meant the ability to open your hips to the side and stick your leg out that way.  My turnout consistently sucked, but I did a lot of Bound-Angle Pose while watching CHiPS and Bad News Bears, way before I even knew it by that name.

I had ballet classes on Saturdays for 10 years, starting when I was 4 years old.  I missed my first end-of-year recital because I’d had Scarlet Fever, but made the next one when we were all sailors.  We had a dance we did wearing spangled costumes, sailor hats and some of us had mops.  I got to have a mop and that was the best ballet year I ever had.  My mom had a photo with me in the front row kneeling on one knee with mop in hand and a shining smile on my face, but I think the photo got ruined in a flood when the woodchuck chewed through her water line.

Ballet went downhill after the sailor year.  I’m not entirely sure why: there was nothing bad about the location (the local VFW hall for a while, then another commercial building later on).  Except at the VFW hall, you couldn’t open the doors on the long side of the studio because there was no porch and a straight drop down about 10 feet to the ground.  I opened a door once and got yelled at.  Between the classes they would play Queen and The Bee Gees on the record player and I absolutely loved it.  Sometimes they would pour out little paper cups of orange soda after class, and ballet was the ONLY place I ever got orange soda to drink as a child.

My ballet teacher had four daughters.  They all suited up in leotards and tights every single Saturday and I never questioned that at all, though now when I look back I can’t imagine they were having a great time helping their mother run her business.  One and Two were way older than I was.  One was in College, which is unbelievably far away when you’re 10, and Two was in High School and then got In Trouble, and she suddenly disappeared from the ballet school and I never saw her again.  Four was my age but only the Popular Girls were allowed to talk to her.  I wasn’t one of them.

Three was another story.  Three wore the leotard and tights but Didn’t Want To Be There.  She was way beyond cool.  About 5 years older than me, dark eye makeup, short blonde hair, athletic, perfect.  Freckles on her nose and she wore a black leather jacket over her leotard when I was 10 and she was 15.  It was a boyfriend jacket. I actually saw her out behind the building once, ballet toe shoes, pink tights, black leotard and black leather jacket, smoking a cigarette, and I watched without breathing till I was dizzy.  I wanted to be her so badly.

I always felt so isolated in those ballet classes: they were much worse than school.  At least in school I had a few friends to talk to.  I went to those classes every Saturday for nearly 10 years and never made a single friend.  I hated every Saturday but my dad thought that little girls should take ballet and piano (yes, I had piano too and hated it about as much) and so I did.  

Up till I was 14.  At 14 I had one of those straight, skinny late-blooming girl bodies.  I was a little taller than I had been at 12 but that was it.  My best friend from grade school got her period when she was 11 and had a bra already then, and boys followed her everywhere she went.  I had a bra too, but I didn’t need one.  Boys never followed me anywhere unless they wanted me to help with their homework.  So I was feeling this whole 14-straight-as-a-stick thing acutely, and this ballet teacher had a group of men come through the school to review her classes. I have no idea whether she was trying to get a bank loan or renew her lease or what, but she made us all line up and then she was walking down the line of us like it was a cadet review, with these men in tow.  I didn’t want to be there, felt very exposed in my leotard and was acutely conscious that I didn’t look like the other girls my age (no bra, and nothing to put in it anyway).  She was chattering about this girl or that girl as she passed them, and as she came by me, she raked me up and down with her eyes and finished her sentence “and some of us wish we had something that we don’t.”

I stared at my heeled tap shoes (yes, I had tap lessons too, and that I was actually sort of good at) and felt myself shaking all over.  There was black at the edges of my vision and I thought I was going to pass out.  Class ended and I got my jacket and bag and walked right out of the studio in my tights and tap shoes (a big no-no) and got in my mother’s car.  We drove home and when I had changed my clothes my heart was still pounding so hard my head spun.  I went to the kitchen and told my mother that I was not going to a dance class ever again and she couldn’t make me.  

Mom didn’t say a word in reply, and I never went to a dance class again.  I have no idea how she explained it to my father.  

Yoga brought all that up, the way memories sometimes come up during meditation--- the horrible humiliation, and the way something had just snapped in my head that day.  Everything looked different and the decision was simple.  No punishment my parents could mete out was worth that.  It was really just a fact: I was not going to a class ever again and my mother couldn’t make me.  

But I also remembered Three.  I’m smiling now as I think of her, and I hope that wherever she is, she is well and happy.