where wine comes from!

I am a sucker for free things. 

I’ll take it!  I’ll do that!  Sure, I’ll eat that!

So, I won a two week pass to The Womens Club from a raffle from a 5k Momma and I did whilst she was in town.  I answered the phone call and when they told me I had won this pass, I got excited like I had won a trip to Europe or something.  I was that woman on The Price Is Right that wins a toaster on Plink-o and freaks. out.

Now, I’m determined to squeeze every ounce of worth-ness outta this free-ness… Which means?  Going to every class that I can make.  So, when Zumba was the only class after work and before my radio training, I thought,

Alright, old lady jazzercize-like class… I’ll take you… Let’s do this Zumba.

And it might not be just an older lady thing, but I mean, who’s mom doesn’t do Zumba?  Although, the other day, on the phone with an ex-boyfriend, he reminded me that I’m “not a spring chicken anymore… soon I’ll be a spinster.”  [no clue why that one didn’t work out… shocking.]

So, I wore pigtails to the class to reinforce my youthfulness.

The class started, I stood in the back… a head taller than every single woman in the class, which would’ve been totally helpful if you danced with your head.

I drank a bit of water, looked around.  The music started, the instructor had her Britney Spear’s mic on and started calling out moves… yep, moves… and they all knew them!  I soon, and quite harshly, learned a lot of things.  Let me tell you something about Zumba:  First, it’s not all old ladies, there are a lot of younger ones, too… But listen to me…

THESE LADIES ARE NOT FUCKING AROUND.

Excuse the all-caps and profanity, but my god!  When did all these women have time to go to Step-It-Up Camp 2011?!  I have never been so lost in my entire life.  It was SO hard and complicated!  This one took a close second behind my first hot yoga experience… and second only because I didn’t actually think I was going to die… unless it was of embarrassment…

It was hilarious how bad I was at it!  She would call out things like,

– Grapevine!…  Salsa!…  Shimmy!…  Push it!

And I would try to follow the fourth-row-back-watered-down version of what the instructor was doing, whilst mentally answering her instruction calls in a panicked internal dialog,

– Where wine comes from!… I want some right now!… What I do when I’m imitating a hooker!… Push it real good!

At one point, she literally called out, “The chicken!” and everyone in the class started doing the exact same Mick-Jagger-like dance while I went through every single one of these…

I was so confused by how bad I was at this dancing exercise… mostly because dancing is how I mainly get my exercise…

Exhibit A:  my first halloween in jackson… one for the books.

Exhibit B:  fall fest ’09… all the single ladies. danced so hard i stripped down to tank top in front of mostly strangers.

Exhibit C:  allison’s surprise birthday party… makin’ it rain on dan long.

Exhibit D-runk:  rendezvous employee party ’08… you can’t get me to do squats like that without some lil’ wayne. p.s. dabney is winning at life hard at this moment.

Yeah, just click that “Topics of Discussion” drop-down to the left over there and select “sweet dance moves.”  You’ll see.  I like to dance.

But then I realized that it’s just organized dancing that I’m real bad at!  Once I connected those dots in class, I felt a lot better.

Cuz, hell, if we all had a couple cocktails in us, my dancing would look AWESOME… and the rest of the classes’ actually would, too!  Because, let’s be honest, and I’m talking to you, 17-year-old dancing in front of me who keeps adding extra “shimmies” to the routine… You don’t actually look cool!  Yes, you do look slightly cooler than me right now because I look like I’m just doing jumping-jacks wrong… but you just danced like a chicken to Michael Franti in sync with twenty-five other women… don’t try that at the club… or anywhere else than HERE.  [exception: some flash-mob i’ll youtube over and over.]

All in all, I sweat my ass off and I think I’ll probably go back.  Why?  Because the deep down confession is that I don’t find it one bit cheesy for those few steps that I’m actually getting it.   And then right after that Taio Cruz song, we start doing some high-knee-clapping-over-the-head move to a Kelly Clarkson chorus and I couldn’t love it more.  I feel awesome.  And I’m not sorry.

[a little embarrassed, but not sorry.]