He wasn’t there last night

The muscley ballet boy who did the clumsy flirting after last week’s tap class. He wasn’t there waiting for me in the hallway after last night’s class. Not that I took a moment to walk down the hallway where I’d last seen him or anything. Because that would just be tacky. And inappropriate. And creepy. So it’s a good thing I didn’t do it.

But! Last night was actually the last tap class of the semester, even though it was only my third class since I just discovered the class existed only two weeks ago. And while there was no tap final exam per se, we were all forced to go down the line and demonstrate our proficiency (ahem) in a number of the more challenging tap basics. Like paradiddles. Which I rock at. And pullbacks. Which, if we were being graded, I totally failed. It is my eternal shame: I’ve studied tap off and on for 20 years and I still can’t do pullbacks. Mostly because they’re a grotesque abomination before the lord. And also because my damn toes can’t seem to make contact with the floor when I’m jumping backward. Because doing so would be a grotesque abomination before the lord. Just like Carrie Prejean’s boobs. Or Mel Gibson’s divorce. Or bangs.

In news from the Department of I Like Your Husband Better Than Mine, one of the women in our class had just come back from New York, where she saw four Tony-nominated Broadway shows. Because her husband is a Tony judge. My husband, for all his charms and talents (military-precision laundry folder, encyclopedic knowledge of useless theater trivia including all the Follies Phyllis actresses in order, adorable text messenger), is very conspicuously not a Tony voter. So we do not wing our way to New York City every spring to see every nominated Broadway show completely free. Which, since I can’t do pullbacks for shit, leaves me with no social upper hand in the cutthroat world of Thursday night adult tap class. Which means I don’t dare audition for Real Tappers of Cook County. Because in the depths of my interior are fears I are inferior. Unless there are paradiddles on the test.