Lesson #2

On Monday, I split my pants at the crotch revealing my Spider-Man underwear.  If you were wondering just how classy I'm keeping it, well, there you go. 

Tuesday (yesterday, as of this writing) was Ballet Class #2.  There were a TON of newbies!  So many, in fact, that, as I watched them all register with the incredibly kind Ballet School Signer-Upper (official title), I stole a moment or two to feel experienced.  "Experienced" is such a relative term, isn't it?  Like, a Freshman Congressperson's Deputy Chief of Staff might not be the most experienced politician under normal circumstances, but if the entire government is wiped out and that person is the only one left standing, then congratulations noob: you're the new President!  (And of course you have to multiply that person's experience level even more if said person is, in fact, Kiefer Sutherland.)  I had been to one class, but all these other people had been to zero classes, so all of a sudden it was as if I'd been doing this for years.  "Ah, yes, I remember, distantly, when I was you, writing down my emergency contact on that form."  ("Just please don't ask me any specific questions about ballet...")

As class moved along, well, so did I.  More or less.  At some points (read: exactly two), I actually even felt a little bit graceful.  It was as if the notes on the piano moved through me, and my body just acted.  Don't get me wrong, it promptly stopped doing that, but, in that moment, I felt what I guess actual ballet dancers must feel all the time: the complete surrender of the physical self to music.  Maybe that happens to experienced dancers of all styles.  It's such a foreign concept to me.  It is not what I'm doing when I'm clunkily bopping to "The Cha-Cha Slide."

But it's actually the less graceful moments that interest me more.  In Lesson 2, more so than the sweaty and nervous Lesson 1, I had more time to actually bust out some metacognition on my stumbles.  In other words, I had time to think. As someone who teaches students at the developmental level of college reading and writing, the experience of structured stumbling couldn't be more valuable.  It is so easy for me to read a handful of pages of a novel and perform some sort of literary analysis on them, whether that's tracking a particular theme, close-reading a character, or linking what I've read to another text.  I imagine that's about where my ballet teacher is, too.  Whatever moves (is that the right word?  "Moves"?) she fires off look incredibly easy because they are incredibly easy.  For her.  Maybe, someday, they could be that easy for Tom and me, too.  (Oh yeah, Tom, my newbie friend from Lesson 1, was back for this class, which, thank God.)  But they're difficult for us, just like literary analysis is difficult for my students.  For now.  When my students express frustration with a text's meaning or struggle to even pronounce certain words on a page, that feeling is no doubt akin to the one I get flopping around in ballet like a trashbag full of live squirrels being electrocuted. 

There are environments that can be set up in which each and every one of us would fail.  The fact that someone is in that environment when you are not is absolutely no reason to look down upon that person's intelligence.  This is the perspective I try to bring into my classroom.  The only reason my students struggle with material that I don't struggle with is environment.  If they stay in this environment long enough, and fight through the struggle honestly, I am sure they'll wind up better than me.  And that's the hope.

When we took our break at Lesson 2's halfway point, our teacher announced that "someone had left their underwear in the lobby."  When I went to use the bathroom, I passed said underwear: a small, flowery thing that seemed both functional and TJ Maxx cute.  It wasn't mine (though, kick it up a few sizes and give it a little more room, and I don't think I'd object to a new pair), but I knew something about exposed underwear (remember my Spider-Mans?).  That seems like what this whole thing takes: the ability to nonchalantly lose your underwear.  To share that which you wear closest to your body, under enough layers to hide it from everyone except those who know you most intimately.  To strip away coverings.  To stand naked.*

When we returned from the break, there was more jumping, more stumbling, more positioning.  In that, though, I felt wisps of balance.  Hints of grounding.  An eagerness to fail more.

(*NOT literally, of course, at least in situations where you don't have the expressed consent of everyone around you.  Please don't randomly take your clothes off on the subway.)