The Dance Location Triangulation

"While I dance, I cannot judge, I cannot hate, I cannot separate myself from life. I can only be joyful and whole. This is why I dance."
~Hans Bos

I read those words a while ago, and they stuck with me. I love to dance. That is the plain and simple truth. And that statement managed to sum up exactly what I feel when I am dancing. There is only one little "problem" - if you will - with feeling so good when I dance: I want to do it all the time!

Most often, I don't mind. If I feel like dancing, I dance. However, this has led to some situations that others might consider embarrassing.

Starting off, a few years back, after I had just discovered ballroom dancing, I one day decided that singing in the shower was no longer enough - I wanted to dance as well. At that time, I was learning the cha cha, and my shower was big enough to do the basic in, so I did. Well, doing the basic was just fine. Trouble came when I got bored of the basic step and decided to throw in some turns. Somewhere around the third time I fell, I finally clued in that maybe the shower isn't the best place to practice the cha cha. (I had tried a few New Yorks in there as well and ended up hitting the wall - not my best idea). Since then I have been much more cautious, only occasionally dancing in the shower, and even then nothing more than the Rumba basic (which fits in there surprisingly well).

After the cha cha/shower incident, I started making a real effort to watch where I was dancing. Unfortunately, it turns out that if I'm listening to music, dancing will happen without me realizing it.

One day, while on the bus, I was listening to a new Tango CD. It was a rather full bus, and I was standing up, holding on to one of the hanging straps. In Argentine Tango class, we had been work on dibujo - a simple embellishment where you trace a small circle on the floor with your foot. Turns out, the bus is a good place to practice these. Your balance gets better, and you learn to adjust the size of the circles you are drawing. What isn't good is when you lose focus and do a voleo at the end of it. Almost took out a backpack with that one. No more tango on the bus after that.

It seems that "unconscious" dancing happens when I am just waiting around, or doing something that doesn't really require focus. Like buying groceries. I can't count how many times I've been in line to pay for my groceries and all of a sudden realize that I've been doing the Bachata, or Merengue, for the past few minutes. Most of the time, a little "line dancing" isn't an issue. Almost taking out an old lady because you saw a free isle and wanted to try a new Paso Doble move, that is. In my defence, even if I had been just walking around the corner, not going into the classic "I'm going to kill the bull" pose, I probably would have come just as close to bumping into her as I did. Probably wouldn't have startled her half as much, but you never know. Thus, "line dancing" is just fine, but dancing down the isles is a no-no.

The only time I have actually felt even close to embarrassed about dancing wherever was when one of my students caught me doing the "rattle snake". Not my fault, mind you, but still. It was early - more than half an hour before students usually showed up at the school, and I was in the kitchen making a cup of tea. The night before I had rediscovered my Ricky Martin CD and was listening to "Shake Your Bonbon", which I decided to do. The "rattle snake" is a fast booty shimmy. What I didn't realize is that one of my male, teenage students had shown up early, and was standing right behind me when I did it. He turned red and ran off. I have not done that move anywhere near the school since, even if I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am alone in the school.

Life Lesson: Do what makes you feel good. Just learn what the limits are, and stay within them.

The Laughter Expansion

One of the best parts of my job is teaching sex ed. No, really, it is. Every year I teach it, I end up with new and hilarious stories to tell.

The best year, so far, has to be when I was team teaching the course with the only male teacher in the school. One of us was very easily embarrassed, and it wasn't me. Me being who I am, and him being more than a little obnoxious, that meant that any chance I had to ramp up the embarrassment factor for him, I did. This included prompting the students to load the question box with the strangest questions they could come up with. The questions they came up with ranged from "If I lose a ball in a freak ball losing incident, can I still have kids?" to "I sometimes wake up with an erection. Is this normal for a girl?"and "Does 'blue balls' refer to the colour of the balls, or their emotional state?".

While they were all amusing, there was one question in particular that stood out. It read "What is the average speed/velocity of ejaculation?" Not having this information at hand, I did some research and actually found an answer. So, class came around again and we were answering all the questions in the question jar; the whole class was killing themselves laughing by the time we got to "What is the average speed/velocity of ejaculation?". Very calmly, I told them 45 km/h. One student, Ryan, looked up, almost startled, and said "That's speeding in a school zone!". Well, everyone burst out laughing. Anne, ever patient, looked at Ryan and told him "You don't have to do it in a school zone". Class was called at that point, due to excessive laughter.

This wasn't the only time Ryan was the source of great amusement during sex.ed. There was one word, no matter how hard he tried, he could never say with a straight face. Nipple. He tried, I'll give him that. I can recall whole half hours at a time where he did nothing by try and say the word "Nipple" without laughing. Sometimes he made it all the way through, and then burst out laughing, most of the time he would hit the 'p' and then lose it. One day, two years after he had finished sex.ed, Ryan stopped by the school. He walked up to my classroom door, said "Hey Tara!" and when I looked over he simply said "Nipple". And stood there, trying to contain himself. It worked, for about 20 seconds. And then came the laughter.

Life Lesson: Sex Ed = Hilarious! (What, they don't all have to be deep.)

The Maternal Interference

My Mom has my best interests at heart. I know this. She just wants me to be happy, and finding the right guy is part of that. Seeing as I haven't had much luck in that department, her helping out can only make things better. Hopefully. Her methods of finding me a mate are, well, a touch unconventional.

Take this past summer as an example. The whole family had congregated in Edmonton for my brother's wedding and, a couple of days before, I was having lunch with my parents at one of our favourite restaurants. I hadn't seen my parents in about 6 months (living in different provinces and all) and in that time I switched perfumes. So, when my Mom came in and gave me a hug, she caught my new scent and commented on it. She then proceeded to turn to one of the owners of the restaurant and say "Hey Danny, you should smell her, she smells great!" To which he replied, while pointedly looking at me "I was thinking about it."

Just last month I was up in Edmonton for another wedding - friends of the family this time - and my parents were there as well. The wedding was held in a bar, a fun, casual affair with lots of laughs. During the course of the evening the groom, Andy, got up to thank the staff of the bar for all of great work they had done. When he had said his piece, my Mom yells out "Especially the bartender -you're hot!" and then she points at me "And she's single!"

Life Lesson: You're parents really do have your best interest at heart. How they go about it may not always be the most conventional way, but they really are trying to do whats best.

The Bus Driver Correlation

I am a regular public transit user. Living in a city that has a decent transit system, it is an easy way to get from point A to point B without the headaches of negotiating traffic. The downside? I have to deal with bus drivers. Now, there are some bus drivers who are perfectly lovely (and, as I have note, largely imported from Nova Scotia). There are also some who are fine, neither good or bad, but do their job effectively. Then there are the bad bus drivers - the ones who speed, jam on the breaks, drive by you in the freezing cold (even when there is still room on the bus), and are generally unpleasant. I can handle those ones. What I can't handle are the bus drives who hit on me. If it was a one time thing, I could overlook it. But this has happened to me on more than one occasion.

Sometimes it is completely harmless, like last week when the bus driver told me how beautiful I was, in French. I initially thought this was something he did for all the women who got on the bus, but, as it turns out, I'm the only one he said it to on the entire (very busy) trip.

Other times, it is something a little more serious, but I'm still able to laugh it off. A couple of years ago, the regular bus driver I had at the time asked me to go to his Christmas party with him (and yes, it was a serious invitation). I politely refused and things were fine.

But then, there are those incidents that just haunt you for life. I was in the habit of taking the bus to work at the same time every day. This meant that I pretty much always had the same bus driver. Now, I'm the kind of person who says good morning (or good afternoon, whatever the case may be) when I get on the bus, and thank you when I get off. I'm also a fairly happy person, so I'm usually smiling. One day, after riding the same bus to work every day for about two months, I was getting off at my regular stop when I suddenly realized that the bus driver had followed me off. He came right up to me, handed me a folded piece of paper, and got back on the bus. Walking into work, I unfolded the paper and, to my surprise, there was a poem there, entitled "Dreaming Pillow". It read, in part:

Send me the pillow you dream on,
So that I may dream on it too.
Send me the pillow you dream on,
Don't you know I'm watch you?

It continued in that vein for a few more stanzas, concluding with "I hope some day to go out with you" plus the guys name and phone number. Needless to say, I switched buses after that.

Life Lesson: When taking public transit, you never know what your bus driver is going to be like. Be prepared for anything!