So You Think You Can Dance? Bitch, please.

I'm pretty sure that I'm an awesome dancer.

And I'm pretty sure that I've always been an awesome dancer.

When I took dancing back in elementary school, I knew I was the best one in my class.  Miss Marilyn knew it too; I could tell by the way she would say, "Great job" when I would step ball-change across the floor.  My ball-changes were steppier than anyone else's, my jazz hands jazzier, my chaine turns spinnier (that's right, spinnier; I can spot like nobody's business).  Even though I never moved past the easiest level of classes, I knew it wasn't because I didn't have the raw inner talent.  After all, I choreographed and executed some REALLY incredible routines in my room. 

And in the shallow end of my pool.

Oh yeah, because I'm also really good at synchronized swimming. 

My skills had to be moved to the back-burner however as I moved through middle and high school.  No one goes to school dances to dance, unless you count slow dancing with a boy, which is not really dancing, it's more like a rhythmic shifting of weight from your left foot to your right.  That's shuffling.
  
And then I got older and discovered clubs.  And cheesy bars with teeny-tiny dance floors (teeny-tiny dance floors are a nightmare for us true dancers). 

And alcohol.

As phenomenal a dancer as I am without alcohol, I am even better with a few drinks in me.

So when a friend suggested that we try a zumba class a few months ago, I was in.  I knew I'd be awesome at it.  Coming from a dance background, I knew I could pick up the steps quickly and would own the class.

Oh. WAIT.  I should tell you something before I get to this next part.

I'm white.

And of Irish ancestry.

Do you see where this going?

Also, I may have attended this zumba class wearing an oversized t-shirt and shorts that I bought back in college with my ex-boyfriend's Friends and Family discount when he worked at Reebok back in 1997.

There may have been an obnoxiously high pony tail involved as well.

Turns out, I suck at zumba.

I got the moves down alright, but when the woman I had been hiding behind left to get a drink and I caught a view of myself in the mirror, trying to do that booty-shaking thing that Beyonce is so fond of, a wave of horror washed over me.

Oh.  My.  God. 

That's what I look like?

It wasn't pretty.  It wasn't cute.  It wasn't even 'has a good personality'. 

I have yet to return to zumba.

Thank God I still have synchronized swimming.