To truly appreciate the magnitude of this miscue, a monumental miscalculation of both form and judgment, one must both recognize and fully process that it took place just subsequent to my forced enrollment in the Jo La Mar dance school's Beginner Jazz Dance class, where I had not only been taught the step-ball change, but sadly, jazz hands, and also that while I was a gorgeous baby and an adorable child, my prepubescence was marked by an entirely unpredicted shift into debilitating ugliness that was in no way hindered by my mother's obsession with continuously sculpting my hair into what was certainly not the first, but what might have been one of Florida's most disturbing, preteen female mullets. And you must also note, that this was at least a year before my orthodontist prescribed what he called a "functional appliance," a combination headgear and mouth piece designed to calm my extreme overbite and pull my virtually nonexistent chin forward out of the realm of Neanderthal, where it had settled around my 10th year. Furthermore, my wardrobe was necessarily culled from the Pretty Plus section of Sears, the infamous design house of Silver Unicorn, which eschewed popular fashion of the day and made fearless venture toward the cutting edge with their thin poly-cotton, horizontally striped, capped sleeved shirts and stiff pleated khaki shorts that snapped up around my arm pits.

Susie Baker was tall and thin with long brown hair and bangs cut just above her eyebrows. She had a younger brother named Toby and a baby sister Maggie with unstoppable blond ringlets. I can't remember much about her parents, but I do know the family lived with a very cranky shut-in grandfather, who we rarely saw but was referred to all around the house on hand-scrawled signs that said things like DO NOT ENTER: GRAMPA THIS MEANS YOU and NOT FOR YOU GRAMPA, I MEAN IT. The Barkers also had a dog, a large German shepherd named Chip who was invariably the topic of conversation in my family's car for at least half the trip over to their house for his aggressive and unchecked welcome routine of rooting crotches.

The lights were dimmed in the Baker's modest suburban living room. Mr. and Mrs. Baker had finally gone to bed, pizza had been consumed, and twelve tightly rolled sleeping bags lined the room's perimeter. A plush sectional partially obscured the wide opening between the living room and the adjoining dining room allowing for dramatic entry and a frighteningly proper backstage. From where I stood I had a view of Susie at the stereo; the birthday girl kneeled waiting for silence, both of us poised for action. I can only assume that there was a moment of hesitance. Certainly I knew, I was not by any stretch of the imagination, a professional or even an amateur dancer, but well-behaved women rarely make history; I was up. I cued the music. It was Duran Duran's "Rio."

I do not remember the precise choreography of my routine, but can only assume that it was peppered with such steps and moves as would have made Ms. Julie, no doubt already tortured by my hideous, fat, uncoordinated presence in her class, cringe. And I would like to also let you know that I remember feeling the lyrics deeply and tried to interpret them through movement and, sadly, facial expression. I was the bird of paradise, a river twisting through a dusty land: my name was Rio. Chip lay sleeping in the corner, unmoved. But the other girls sat Indian-style around the room, singing along, and somehow decided either from collective retardation or by group practical joke that I should win.

I would like to say that I learned a lesson that night, that thinking back on it, my unfortunate actions led me to a greater understanding of something, anything, that I can draw upon to bolster my strength in moments of adversity. But like so many ill-fated and meaningless moments, it did not. And when I asked my mother about this recently, she pretended that she had no idea what I was talking about, just continued to eat her chopped salad and changed the subject. She told me simply that it was very nice of Susie Baker to have invited me to her birthday party at all. "She was older than you, you know," she told me. Obviously it is a painful memory for everyone involved.

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092007