September 18, 2003

Yesterday, figuring that I should try something different from step aerobics every once in a while, I went to the hip-hop/funk class at my gym.

This turned out to be a big, big, big mistake.

The class was taught by someone whose name ought to have been Shoshana, though it wasn’t. She was a white woman, probably in her late thirties, with two pigtails. Not the type of person you’d think would be particularly good at hip-hop.

But you’d be wrong.

She showed us a combination (I suspect you don’t call them “combinations” in hip-hop/funk class, but I don’t really know what you do call them, so I’ll call them combinations) and I was like, okay, I can learn that. It’ll take me a while, but I can learn that.

And then she kept going.

And going.

Of course, every single other person in the class was having absolutely no trouble at all following her. But what not-Shoshana was doing was so complicated and difficult that I wasn’t even thinking about what a moron I looked like, because if I’d diverted one iota of mental energy to that, I would have tripped over my own legs and fallen and broken something.

After about ten more minutes of St. Vitusesque lurching, I came to a very simple realization:

I am not funky.

So I left, got some dinner, and went home to write.