Cha Cha Chi

I wish I was could do normal things, like touch my toes. It’s like I have rigor mortis or something, without all the decomposing and living in the ground. I can barely reach my shins. What’s up with that? If I was morbidly obese, then I’d have an excuse, but really I have none. High-set hips?

A friend suggested I try yoga. He says it helps flexibility, relaxation, inner-peace and whatnot. “Hell no,” was my reply. I’ve seen what yoga is all about -- a lot of bending in freaky positions named after animals. But then I found this DVD called “Yoga for Inflexible People.” Wow, that’s me, I thought. How did they know?

I’m happy to say that the DVD is now collecting dust. About the only position I could handle was the “mountain pose” (which involved standing up straight, no bending whatsoever). Everything else was just bothersome and/or painful. Screw Yoga.

So then I tried Tai-chi. A guy at my work is teaching classes for free. We did a lot of stretching, which wasn’t so bad. Then he had us go through all these positions named after monkeys. Long story short: I can’t tell my yin from my yang, no matter how many times he says to suck in the yin and blow out the yang. What does that even mean?

And now I got suckered into dance lessons, once more at the prodding of a friend (it’s like I can’t make my own decisions). They’re taught at a dance studio with two other couples, so we get individual attention, which helps. We learned the cha-cha this week, and thankfully I was able to handle it just fine, despite having to swing my hips around like a desperate hooker.

When I was studying in Senegal, everyone danced, all the time. If you didn’t dance, you were either crippled or white. I’m the latter, and so I would do my best when people in the markets would start banging on pots and a large woman would grab me and expect me to fling my arms and legs about in some semblance of rhythm. You wouldn’t believe how those people can fling their limbs! Forget the cha-cha-cha, forget the yang, forget the chi, that kind of dancing was FUN. I miss Africa.