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Written, narrated, and enginneered by,
Jill Badonsky
The Script :
I’ve always identified with Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, the ugly duckling story… maybe that’s why I don’t eat duck or why I should.
I wasn’t exactly a swan born in a family of ducks, I was more like say, a penguin or a frog floating by on a lily pad. Point is, I didn’t belong with ducks especially deeply conservative ducks, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I wasn’t, which made it a bit lonely. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling lonely for this reason .
When you feel you don’t belong in your family, a strange thing happens because you’ve been imprinted with a I don’t-belong kind of radar because not belonging feels familiar so you may find yourself subconsciously gravitating toward places to feel you don’t belong because we like the familiar.
Speaking of… A few years ago, I thought about taking a hip-hop dance class. My background is in ballet, but for some strange reason, I love hip hop music. There was a class close by at a place called Culture shock.
Signed up, got some shoes, and, I changed my mind.
Yeah, too much of a … culture shock. I’m thinking there will be kids jumping and spinning and executing complicated choreography all in sequence and I have problems with the Macarena among friends Hiphop would mean I’d feel klutzy, embarrassed, and possibly in need of hospitalization.
So … back to the Stairmaster with the penguins
The hip hop desire didn’t want to go away though. But every time I thought about going, I imagined people lots younger than me with caps on backward, pants half-mast saying, “yo “Yo.” I was overthinking it… I thought, so one day I just went.
When I got there, there were a bunch of young people with backward caps and pants half-mast, including the teacher. But soccer moms and white college girls were there as well. There was a woman at least five years older than me and another one in the first row, two moves behind everyone, so I thought yo, maybe I have a chance of fitting in.
Then I looked in the mirror… Everyone else’s head in the class ended at my shoulders. In other words, I was in a troupe of stocky, shorter people, because hip-hop works best and looks best when you’re short and stocky. In the mirror’s reflection, at 5’9” my head looked like a giraffe in a jungle picture where the giraffe’s its head is awkwardly sticking up above the rest of the herd, and I thought… I’m in the wrong herd, I don’t fit in. Or do I? The woman next to me looked up at me with a look on her face that said, “No, you don’t fit in”. I thought… I should go.
But I stayed, despite the hip hugger mishap. I forgot was wearing waist high big girl panties and hip huggers. I looked in the mirror and two inches of pink underwear were sticking out of the top of my hip black dance pants. I turned pink too, I’m not sure why… but I left them that way. They were like a billboard that said, I SHOULDN’T BE HERE.
Then, Miss Trina Lyons entered the room. Miss Trina Lyons was the hip-hop teacher who moved like a movie queen in the most self-confident style of breathtaking, beat-perfect-precision hip-hop I ever knew possible. She started leading a dance move where the herd was turning in a circle with arms in a stiff gangsta-tude swing. In the mirror I saw that my ‘tude looked a lot like Marsha Brady with PMS. I cracked a smile and one second later, Miss Trina announced to the cl
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