You make me feel like dancin'....

I take this "Group Groove" class at the YMCA. It is a dance fitness class--which means that it is this generation's answer to Jazzercise, which I can't believe people could even say with a straight face. I don't really know what Jazzercise is, but I can only imagine a bunch of women in leg warmers and headbands being led by a Richard Simmons wannabe. Now, if it were true to the name the entire class would take place in a dark room, everyone would be wearing black and nodding to a quartet and the only exercise would be lifting your right arm to light your cigarette. Now there's an exercise class I can get behind.

Anyway, my Groove class is nothing like that. We actually sweat. There are 9 or 10 tracks of music and there are routines we do to them. It sounds like aerobics but it isn't because we really dance. We do hip-hop and Latin and disco...it's a lot of fun. My neighbor teaches this class on occasion and I told her one day that I feel like a total idiot dancing, especially to the hip-hop numbers and she said, "Don't worry, no one's looking at you." I was like, "Who are you kidding?" She said, "No, really. Everyone is too busy trying to learn the dance to look at what everyone else is doing." I said, "Are you crazy? I look at EVERYONE. I don't care how stupid I look as long as I'm assured that there are people in there that look even stupider than I do." She said, "Oh, you're so bad," and I replied, "No, I'm just honest. I look around, see who is making a total fool of themselves and watch them the whole time. That's half the fun of the class."

Two other women I know take this class with me. This morning we were all totally distracted by this woman in the front row. She has been in our class before and when she walked in we all looked at each other and groaned. This out-of-shape fool thinks she's a Solid Gold Dancer. Honestly, she wears $70 jazz dance shoes and warms up like a ballet dancer would. However, she is 5 feet tall, weighs a good 160 (all of which she carries in her upper body judging from the number of rolls of back fat she has) and has a really pushed in face. I'm telling you, she looks like a Pekinese. If she turns to the side her face is completely flat. I have never seen anything like it. Now you would figure that someone that looks like that would not want to draw anymore attention to herself. But not this woman! She is in the FRONT row flipping her hair around and shaking her groove thing like a Fly-Girl. And she's doing it all with her serious dancer face on. I don't know why this annoys me so much, but it just does. Even our instructors don't over exaggerate their movements like this woman. She's throwing her arms around and shimmying and looking so smug at the same time. It makes me so mad, I just want to kick her.

So, today we are barely into the warm-up song when the nursery worker comes in the room and retrieves the Disco Queen to get her kid from the nursery. My two friends look at me and smile and we immediately mentally high-five each other. I turn to them and say, "It's because I was praying for her to leave, " and one of them says, "Oh! The church lady was praying and it worked!!" I said, "See! Behold the power of prayer."

Not two minutes later the Disco Queen walked back in and took her righteous spot in the front row, right in from of us. I said to my friends, "God was teasing me because I've been bad. If I were a better person she wouldn't have returned." So, we had to watch her cha-cha like she was Rita Moreno and disco like Denny Tario.

I left early.

I also like to watch the 70 year old Chinese woman who comes every Saturday. Bless her heart...she is the worst dancer I have ever, ever seen. Picture an ancient 4'11" Asian woman trying to dance to "Bootylicious". Yet, she is there every single Saturday. I love that. Plus, if I stand by her in class I look like a dancing genius. It's brilliant.

My neighbor, the teacher, is fun to watch too. She is a really great dancer. She is blond and pretty and thin. She has 4 kids. Secretly I hate her and imagine all these terrible things about her, like...she has a third nipple that mars her otherwise perfect body. Did I mention that she is really nice and friendly too. Plus, she lives in the biggest model house in our neighborhood and she has a big flat screen TV in her basement. Now you hate her too, right? (unless you are a man and now you WANT her. Sickos.)

Another fun person I watch is the pretty-cheerleader mom who is there in the evening class. She has a fantastic boob job. Her hair colorist is a genius. All her work-out outfits match. And she is a complete spazz. She looks like she is getting electrocuted. I keep waiting for Allen Funt to come out and tell me I am on Candid Camera. Seriously, she just looks ridiculous. I like to stand next to her too.