A Love Letter to Pretty Erica

You saw it happen here folks, I asked for new ideas on exercise, something new to try....and one of my lovely readers, Pretty Erica, spoke up and invited me to her hip hop class. I took her up on it and attended last night and whoo boy kids! Now that was something.

I'm no dancer, let's not kid ourselves. I grew up on the North Shore and went to the high school Breakfast Club was based on. We learned to dance like Molly Ringwald and then we stopped learning anything else.

But I like dancing and am always looking for a new thing to try right?

Erica was so sweet, letting me know exactly how this was going to go down, filling me in on some information, making sure I wasn't too nervous. And I wasn't really...I was doing this for fun! She even treated me to my first class! Erica has a dance background but is really just getting back into it and I can see the excitement on her face, that got me excited too. There were about 7 people in the class, teacher comes in, everyone's stretching and I'm thinking "I know how to stretch! I do it every day!" So that was good. Then the teach starts warm ups and I'm pretty good there, I know what "4 slow then 4 uptempo" means! I was pretty good there too. I'm feeling alright, like I know what's going on...

We finish the warm up and I'm ready to go! That's it right? Done?

Nope.

Teach starts teaching us a dance, a move or two at a time and I kind of have it. He's going really slow you know....and I do do the salsa dancing tapes! So we're good, I'm laughing, Erica's smiling and laughing....a couple of people look pretty good, but who knows. Well then Teach speeds it up and whoa...

My arms are flailing, my legs are flailing, my mind is flailing, but hell, I figure we're just kind of working on this tiny, short piece for the whole class right?

NEIN!

He starts moving on, adding moves and Erica's smiling and I'm smiling and the people in the class are smiling and then, oh god, and then...he has us go two by two across the floor! Wait....they're going to watch me do this? HA!

I watch as people go ahead of me and Erica is like, right on the money! Girl is shakin' it, movin' it, she's got the moves and she's adding some cool stuff and I'm blown away by the control she has of her body! Amazing. I go across and wave my arms around and do something odd with my legs and we move on. Teach keeps adding stuff, I keep trying to make everyone laugh and not screw them up.

Eventually we're donkey-kicking our legs in the air, swinging our legs around on the floor, doing hopping push ups...I don't know what the hell is going on. Erica's cruising, sweating, working her ass off and I'm in the corner still doing Molly Ringwald moves when I don't know what else to do.

The teacher was great, giving me kind words and helping me here and there but also just letting me fuck it up on my own.

And I gotta tell you guys, I don't know what I did in that class, but I was HYPER walking out of there. Erica was beat, the other people in the class were beat, they had worked themselves so hard...I too was sweating and had worked hard but I had a ton of fun. What a rush to try and control your body like that, to think so hard about what you're doing, to focus for an hour and a half on control, patience, logic and creativity.

We went and got burgers afterward and I was still really hyper. Got home, still hyper, I talked John's ear off, showed him what we had to do and how I actually did it. I was laughing in the bathroom going to bed, thinking about what I must have looked like trying to kick my 40-year old legs in the air.

Do something new folks, seriously. It opened my eyes to how amazing dancers are (and Erica especially, I didn't know how great she was) and it was great total body exercise, I feel it today for sure. I totally felt like Jennifer Beals! It was neat to see what other people do for themselves, how they play and work. It was a total rush!

Will I go back? Maybe! I don't know, Erica and I talked and I might try a different class, more beginner stuff, but looking back on it, I was totally pumped! It was hard and boy did I look stupid, but it was so much fun and so good for my brain and my body....yeah, I might go back.