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My Son's First Dance Class
By Deborah Boehle
I just survived my son's second dance class without any signs whatsoever of an anxiety attack. This is quite a feat, considering the tight chest, racing heartbeat, lump in my throat and general anxiety I suffered last week at his first jazz lesson.
As we walked into the lobby the first day, he nervously changed into his dance shoes and went into the studio. I watched him through the two-way mirror pacing back and forth, back and forth as the other 9- and 10-year-old students began trickling into the room. It was becoming painfully obvious he would be the only boy. I wondered if he would be mad at me for suggesting he take a dance class, and that's when the anxiety began.
As he paced, I began to see a look of panic on his face. I thought he was going to burst into tears at any moment, but I could tell he was holding it in. I recalled the scene from "Parenthood" when Steve Martin starts daydreaming about his son firing a rifle from a tower and shooting innocent people. When Martin tries to talk his son down from the tower, he is answered by a shot into his megaphone, and his son screaming that it was all Dad's fault -- because his father made him play Little League. Would my son be permanently damaged because I "made him" take this jazz class?
My daydream was interrupted when I saw a little girl walk up to my son and say something. I couldn't see either of their faces, but I knew she was asking him what he was doing in this class full of girls. Oh, how could she be so mean? Why do so many parents raise sexist children? Later in the class, I saw a rather brusque woman chastising a child for touching the window that the students saw only as a mirror on their side of the wall. That's that mean little girl's mother, I thought. I saw the resemblance. No wonder she's so mean. With a mother like that, who wouldn't be mean?
