Three-year-old Adelaide has started her very first dance class.Actually, it’s her first class of any kind at all (other than Sunday School.) Naturally, I was somewhat apprehensive about her impending behavior.
Oh, the excitement on her first day! Her little cousin (and best friend) Caroline had signed up too, which made it even more exciting. Adelaide donned her tights and borrowed a sparkly outfit from Josie. She was ready a whole hour early.
Along with her sisters (there was no way they were going to miss out on this spectacle), we made our way to the classroom and met the teacher.
A dozen other six-and-under giggly little girls squirmed around while pretending to listen to instructions. All of the moms tied lengths of yarn to their ballerinas’ right hands and right feet (for their girls to reference during the hokey pokey).
Then Adelaide ceremoniously put her nametag (on a yarn necklace) around her neck. She was READY TO DANCE.
Unbeknownst to the teacher on that first day, Adelaide and Caroline like to talk. And laugh. And goof around. As soon as they stepped onto the hardwood floor, they paired up and proceeded to dance in the opposite direction of the rest of the class.
Besides the fact that they are the youngest (and shortest) girls in the class, they are apparently also the most uninhibited. In fact, it was like they were the only two there – two mini prima ballerinas on their own private stage.
They laughed. They squealed. They galloped. They pranced. They raised their left hands instead of their right ones. They put their right foot in instead of their left. They hokied when they should have pokied.
In short, they did shake it all about but not exactly at the appropriate time. They were dancers of distraction.
The only times Adelaide acknowledged anyone besides Caroline was when she sneakily cut her eyes toward me, grining a huge goofy grin and waving her entire arm at me.
At one point, another little girl wanted to hold Caroline’s hand, but Adelaide was having none of that. She intercepted that little problem and gave her a dirty look. The interloper took the hint and pirouetted away to safety.
Caroline took this opportunity to assault the teacher with questions: “Who are you? What is your name? I know, but what is your first name? And what are we doing? And what is this dance called?”
From our seats in the back of the room, Caroline’s mom and I enjoyed the question and answer session. Well, I enjoyed it. Her mom just shook her head and hissed, “Pssst! Caroline! No more questions! No more questions!”
Little did we know that what was coming up next would make all those questions seem a lot less, um, questionable.
During what started out as a cute routine set to Disney’s Under the Sea, Adelaide decided that instead of following the current, so to speak, she would make some waves and launch into her own version of “The Toot Dance.”
“The Toot Dance” is the dance where you twirl and then you toot. Then you kick your leg up, you toot, you bend over, you toot, you raise your arms gracefully, you toot, you curtsy (like a lady) and then you toot (not so much like a lady.)
I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard.
The funniest part was that she never even acknowledged any of those toots during the dance. No matter how loud the toots got (and in the cavernous, hardwood-floored room, they carried quite an echo, believe me), she maintained a straight face.
I could barely contain myself. For the first time in years, I actually laughed so hard I snorted.
On the way home, I asked Adelaide what she thought about her very first dance class.
She sighed, smiled wistfully, and smoothed down her tutu. “I like my class. And I like my dwess. And, well, Mom, I danced very nicely today, didn’t I, Mom? I was just like a real lady. All except for the tooting part.”
-from my 2/5/12 article for www.mentorpatch.com
