Because Looking the Part is Half the Battle

I’m 33 and started my ballet training at 32.

My turnout is more of a ‘turn-in’.

I can never remember the position my head is supposed to be in so I’m often looking out at the mirror while everyone else in class is looking demurely toward their hand on the bar.

Doing rond de jambes with the arm feels like rubbing my belly while patting my head and it probably looks pretty similar.

My ballet teacher regularly tells me I have ‘desk job posture’.

I don’t have the ability to follow the weight-loss advice handed down to me by one of the other ballerinas at my studio, “When you’re sitting on the couch and you’re hungry, instead of eating just do two minutes of crunches.”

I almost never have time to take more than one ballet class a week. My teacher says if I really want to get better I should be there 3-4 times a week.

Sometimes when I’m working really hard at having the perfect position and holding every part of my body in exactly the right way during the adagio, I glance into the wall of mirrors and realize the look on my face is the same as the one on my nephew, Colby’s, face when he’s taking a crap.

I will absolutely, undoubtedly, without even the remotest possibility, never be a professional ballet dancer.

None of that means that the very perfect Christmas present I could get from my husband wouldn’t be an awesome, over-priced, utterly impractical, adult tutu:

He just knows me that well. I am going to dance the shit out of that thing in my next class.

Here’s hoping you got the perfect, impractical, dream gift for Christmas, too!