crowbelle's Diaryland Diary
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Spinning Along...
Spinning Along...
As a young girl, I was forced into taking dance lessons.
Around the age of 8, I began with tap dancing lessons. My world was much smaller then, I lived in Marblehead, and having to go over to Salem with my Mum once a week to Miss Duffy's Dance Studio was quite an outing for me.
We always went on a Wednesday, after school. Sometimes I can remember getting excused from the last part of school to leave for an early dance lesson. But because we were going straight from the Story (grammar) School over to Miss Alice Duffy's Dance Studio, I had to wear my leotard and tights (black) underneath my school clothes (skirt/blouse/dress - no jeans back in the old days). So, the whole day in school, if I had to use the loo, I had to totally undress to get down to under-wear, what a pain!
I started out with tap dancing. I liked that a lot. I loved the actual tap-shoes... making that tapping noise from the metal plates on the bottoms of the shoes, and the shoes were not exactly as comfy as sneakers or trainers, but not too bad. Except when I had a recital... I can remember my Mum painting my tap shoes silver - to go with the outfit she'd made for me (tu-tu variety)... those painted silver shoes were far from comfy on that stage!
So I went along fine for a year or so like that, tap-tap-tapping my way every Wednesday thru life.
So we changed from tap, to "ballet" classes. This involved wearing flat soft ballet slippers, which were ok, but the dance was a lot different...
But... you see... i was a tomboy as a girl!
This part lasted a while, but Mum had other plans.
The next changeover was to "toe dancing." Yep, no more comfy soft ballet slippers for me.
I had the big guns on my feet now, and those long silky ribbons that attached them, which wrapped around and around my ankles and up the leg a bit...took forever getting them on just right. And i had to stuff cotton batting into the toes of these killer-shoes so's my toes wouldn't stand directly on the hard surface of the floor.
Well, that cotton batting was fine - in theory - but I went thru the next few years as a toe dancer, on my toes every week, and in recitals, and the pains I had in my feet were just too much to endure in the end. Of course, besides the Wednesday afternoon lessions (private/solo lessons for this type of dance, rather than the classes with others before) my Mum wrote down all the dance steps in a notebook and at home she'd roll up the living room rug, and I'd have to practice my dance routines on the hardwood floors, with those infernal toe-shoes on my feet.
After a few years of constant foot pain, I gave up and demanded to be let out of this torture.
Mum moved me (and my brother this time) into "acrobatic lessions" at Miss Duffy's Dance Studio.
This was tumbling, and was a lot of fun. I got good at it, being somewhat double jointed in my knees and back. I could do backbends, and cartwheels, and all the fun stuff. My brother and I developed a skit together, and we even performed it with the local YMCA in a minstrel show!
I was the final act...I'd stand on the stage, put a hankie on the floor behind me, turn back-to the audience, and slowly to music, would lean over backwards, with my face upside down looking toward the hankie, and grab it with my teeth, no hands! and come back up from the back-bend.
Clap-clap-clap-clap-clap!
It was fun but I was very nervous, not being a natural born actor or performer.
Then my teens came along and I quit dancing in favor of boys!
But somewhere along the way, (and my podiatrist says it was the toe-dancing stage) my feet were permanently injured...bunions started developing as bony protrusions next to my big toes.
Back in the 1960's, when I was a teenager, the style then was to wear spike heeled shoes with very pointy toes... and I did wear those horrendous things for many years, with the old fashion nylons that attached to garter belts. I can remember at one job I had in Washington, D.C., only 2 blocks up from the White House, standing at the copy machine in my 3-inch high heeled shoes, almost crying from the pain coming from my toes.
So whether it was the high heels or the tortuous toe dancing, I got bilateral bunions in my formative years and nothing was ever right for me again!
In the 1980's I had my left bunion surgially fixed. Back then there were no laser bunionectomies, like there are today, so it was major surgery, with a cast up to my knee for 6 weeks... It was 9 months before I could get back to any semblance of normal life.
I never had the right bunion fixed.
It's gotten much worse over the years, and now it hurts to do much of any walking.
I also learned, at the age of 14, that I was born with an extra lumbar vertebra, and spent 2 weeks in bed, not able to move any part of my body. That extra vertebra has given me a lifetime of grief and pain, and I am at the point now that I can't really do much of anything physical. You need good feet and a good spinal cord for that!
So I just wanted to take this opportunity to say Thanks Mum, for the dancing lessons!
And my sympathies go out to any little girls out there who are just starting out in that direction!
Cheers!
2:29 pm - 05 March 2004
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