I need chips with my salsa

Anyone who’s met me probably knows a few things about me: I curse like a sailor, love to eat, and I am one of the whitest white girls you will ever meet.  Translation: I can’t dance. Sure, I can do the white girl shake and shuffle, and I’m great at the middle school slow dance.  But nobody would ever look at me and say “Hey, that chick’s got some moves.”

Given this, dance-inspired workout classes have never really been my forte.  I can plank and jump squat with the best of them, but throw me in a step aerobics class and be prepared to watch me trip all over myself.  So I’m not entirely sure what made me think that Zumba would be a good idea.  I think my reasoning went something like this: “It seems fun. It has fun music.  Everyone and their mother is doing it.  Therefore, I must try it.”

The building where I live has a small gym with an even smaller studio for classes, and a pretty robust class schedule for its size.  I looked at the schedule early one Wednesday morning after a workout session, and noticed that they offered Zumba (taught be a woman) and Latin Dance (taught by a man) on alternating Wednesday nights.  That night happened to be a Zumba class.  Two workouts in one say? Why not.  I would go to Zumba that night and try not to embarrass myself too much (in front of neighbors that I see regularly, no less).

I showed up at the gym 5-10 minutes before the appointed class time (I’m nothing if not always early) and waited.  By the time the class was supposed to start, a few people had trickled in, but not as many as I was expecting.  This was Zumba, the most popular workout in the solar system.  Surely my neighbors had gotten that message and would show up in droves.  A minute later, I realized my mistake when a small, overly perky man with a Spanish accent walked in.  

They’d switched the schedule – this was Latin Dance Class.  Oh shit.

Never one to want to draw attention to myself (or be rude – me? rude? never!) by walking out of a class with so few people in it, I stayed (it also probably had something to do with the fact that I was already positioned furthest away from the door.  Bad move, Crudele.  Noted for futureclasses .).  How bad could this be, right?  Even if I don’t get every single move down, it will still be a good workout, right?  And workout instructors are always encouraging even if you’re horrible at the moves, right?  (I mean, our sweet instructor always only had words of encouragement for the older lady in kickboxing class who looked like she was swinging spaghetti noodles at a giant.)

Not so much.  Mr. Latin Dance instructor was apparently a suppressed Latin Dance *S-T-A-R*.  His teaching method went something like this:

1. Crank up the music way too loud for the small room.
2. Give instructions way too softly for the volume that the music was at, while dancing at full speed and facing away from the class. (And mind you, the instructions that he was giving was basically “1-2-3-4” and you just had to follow what he was doing.  I guess moves have no names in dancing?)
3. Continue adding moves until most people in the class is utterly confused. Tell the most uncoordinated girl in the class (oh! oh! that’s me! pick me!) “No, like this” every 5 minutes. Then do the whole “1-2-3-4” thing again.
4. Start all over with a new song.
5. Continue for the duration of the hour-long class.

While I was definitely sweaty after class, I’m not so sure how much of a workout I actually got.  In my book, jumping around like an idiot for an hour doesn’t exactly count as exercise. As we were walking out afterwards, the other woman who was in the class (who had apparently been there before and could sense my frustration) said to me “Don’t worry, it gets easier.  Just stick with it.”  Aw, thanks for trying to boost my self-esteem, random chick that lives in my building who I’ve never seen before and haven’t seen since.  But I think I’ll stick to workouts that don’t require a terrible amount of rhythm.

What qualifies in my book?  Oh, you know, I just signed up for five pole dancing classes.  Obviously, you don’t need rhythm for that!  Oy vey..


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