pretty fingers and lollipops

From the ages of four to seven, I spent every Saturday morning at Miss Emily’s School of Dance, located in the Greek Orthodox church in Roslindale, my hometown. The decision to enroll me in tap and ballet classes must have made sense to my parents. I was a stage-struck child, one who refused to go to bed without first putting on that night’s production of “The Leila Cohan Show,” a one-woman extravaganza featuring songs, jokes and the occasional dance number, all performed under the glow of the flashlight I made my father hold above my head. Dance lessons must have seemed to my parents to be an outlet for my creative energy and so every Saturday morning, I learned the absolute basics of ballet and tap with several other girls and one (much mocked) boy.

Despite my obvious enthusiasm, it quickly became clear that, even for a four year old, I was not a born dancer. A photo from the time shows all the students in my class doing plies. The other children look like miniature ballerinas, with their bottoms in line with their feet. I, on the other hand, appear to be performing some bizarre caricature of a plie. I am leaning forward to a ridiculous degree with my bum in the air and my chest stuck out. While the hands of the other girls have the thumb and middle finger lightly touching in what Miss Emily called “pretty fingers”, I have my thumb and middle finger clamped together and the other fingers splayed outrageously in a manner resembling some ungodly cross between spirit fingers and devil hands.

I wasn’t much better at tap. As much as I loved demonstrating and shouting the names of the steps (“KICK BALL CHANGE!”) for my mother in the kitchen after class, I was generally out of sync with the rest of the class, jumping onto my right foot just as everyone else hopped onto their left. My arms flailed rather than glided. I may have had the right head of curls, but Shirley Temple I was not.

The highlight of the dancing school’s year was to be a recital held at a local high school. Oblivious to my failings, I was excited beyond belief at the chance to show off what I thought of as my brilliant talent in front of not only my parents, but an audience of total strangers. Maybe someone important would see me and whisk me off to Broadway or Hollywood. With these dreams of stardom dancing through my head, I was horrified to learn on the Saturday before the recital that, despite my status as one of the shortest members of the class, I would be dancing in the back row during the tap number. The back row! How would people see me there? When my mother picked me up that day, I was in tears.

“Miss Emily says I’m going to stand in the back row during the tap song!” I managed to sob out eventually.

“Well, why do you think that is?” my mother asked.

“Maybe because I don’t know the dance as well as the rest of the girls? I just keep forgetting it, Mommy, so I make up my own.”

“Well, maybe Miss Emily wants you all to do the same dance. Why do you want to stand in the front if you can’t remember the dance?”

“(Sob) I just want everyone to seeeeeee meeeeee.”

I begged my mother to negotiate with Miss Emily, but to no avail. I was relegated to the back row. At this point, I became mutinous. I scowled during rehearsals. I muttered under my breath that Miss Emily was stupid. I wrinkled my nose in disgust when anyone asked me about the upcoming recital.

When the long-awaited night finally arrived, I made it through the ballet performance without incident. We had several songs between the ballet and tap performances, during which we were meant to get changed. The song for the tap performance was “Lollipop” (“Lollipop, lollipop, oh lolly lollipop”) and, in keeping with the theme, we were all to carry real novelty lollipops. To a four year old, this was the pinnacle of excitement. While waiting to go onstage, I played with my lollipop, pretending it was a microphone, then a guitar. Carrying on with my musical theme, I began to pretend it was a drumstick, much to the amusement of my friends. During a particularly enthusiastic air-drum solo, I brought the lollipop down hard on the back of a chair. It broke in half. I burst into tears.

One of the chaperoning parents came running over. Quickly assessing the situation, she offered me a fake painted lollipop that had been kept on hand in the event of emergencies or premature eating. I worried that if I took the fake lollipop, I would lose the chance to eat the lollipop I had broken. Miss Emily promised us that we could eat the lollipops after the show and with my chance at fame thwarted by my back row status, the promise of a huge lollipop was all I was looking forward to. I refused to take the fake lollipop. Before the chaperone could lay down the law, another parent was calling us to come on stage and I ran, clutching my contraband lollipop.

If carried with one hand, my lollipop would have been visibly broken, so I was forced to use both hands to hold the lollipop like a steering wheel. I stuck out like a sore thumb among the other students, all of whom were carrying the lollipop with one hand and using their unoccupied arm to glide in a simulacrum of professional dancers. At least, I would have stuck out if I hadn’t been hidden in the back row. Maybe Miss Emily was right after all.