Step this way

Yesterday I signed my daughter up for dance lessons. "How precious!" you may think. Yes, I'm sure it will be that. "She'll develop some skills and maybe show some aptitude," you may opine. Hopefully she will. "Every little girl wants to be a ballerina," you offer. Well, except those who want to be mutant space rangers. "You're hoping she's inherited some of your talent!" If I had ever had any talent, yes, I would pray fervently for it to have been passed on. These are not the reasons why my daughter will be taking dance lessons starting in two weeks.

She will be taking dance lessons because we have a basement.

Incomprehension is spreading itself across your face; I've dealt with that before. Explanation is on the way.

Most foundations here in the Beautiful Desert Southwest are laid flat on concrete slabs. We have no frost heave problems, so concrete foundations are economical and secure. (Very unlike the foundations in less blessed places, like Missouri, say, where they have to have crawl spaces to deal with ventilation and ground freeze . Also so the snakes and spiders will have safe habitats. We wouldn't want them crawling around in the cold, would we? Far better to keep them in a warm and homey place so we always know where to find them.) But my parents, being of a very different, and very Mormon, breed, decided that any house they built would have a basement--so necessary to store all the Young Women's, Elders' Quorum, and Primary stuff, you know. Oh, and for the thirty-year old wheat. (Sociological note: it may be possible to identify someone's religion based solely on their choice of foundations. It would make an interesting study for anybody on the verge of selecting a Senior Thesis topic. Go ahead and use it--just send me the results of your research so I can see if my hunch has been validated.)

When my parents built the basement-foundationed house in which I currently reside (please no snarky comments about people never leaving their comfort zone. I left it with joy in my heart and stars in my eighteen-year-old eyes, but ten years later the siren call of low mortgage payments lured me back. That and the fact that this is the only spot in town with no scorpions. Which was at the top of the home-requirements list), they covered the particle board subfloors with ceramic tile--ugly ceramic tile, it must be admitted. Ugly ceramic tile that cracked thirteen seconds after it was mortared in place, but that is neither here nor there. It was the 80s, and the choice of ugly ceramic tile it can be blamed on the general cultural malaise of the era. When the floors, which were not only non -attractive, but also set over a cavernous echo chamber and thus exceedingly good at carrying sound waves, were done and only starting to crack a bit in the more heavily-trafficked areas, they moved in with three daughters, ages 11-7.

It took my father exactly fourteen minutes to proclaim, "If I had wanted this much noise, I would have raised elephants! Are you young ladies or pachyderms?" (Well, I know he said something to that effect, but I was too shocked to believe it. Who was he calling ungraceful? I tripped over my feet fewer than thirty times per day! And then I figured he was talking about my sisters and started laughing too hard to get an exact quote, and was eventually too lazy to write it in my journal even if I had. So I'm working from an extremely faulty memory. You'll just have to take it on trust that there were elephants somewhere in his pronouncement.) The point was made: after paying for dance lessons for seven years, he expected us to make good his investment. No more heavy feet. Henceforth we would trip lightly through the house, swaying gently with the breeze as we tip-toed our way around. Being dutiful daughters--I was actually able to type that out while snorting emphatically! Ten points for me.--we accepted his word as law. Or at least as suggestion. (We were on the edge of teen-hood, after all.) Thenceforth, we wafted around corners, and glided about rooms. Our movements were studies in adolescent pachydermic grace. Unless we were ticked. (Which, as teenagers, was pretty much all the time.) Then we made the basement reverberate with the thunder of our ire. "You want elephants? I'll show you elephants!!!!! Take that, you tiles and shaking support beams!!!! Feel the weight of my wrath!!!!! I am half-grown woman, hear me roar!!!!! Metaphorically!!! Through my thudding feet!!!!!"

Fast forward twenty-some-odd years: I can still move about pretty silently. I've scared the blibbering jeebers out of my husband when he thought I was in a room far, far away, and then looked up, choking on his purloined cookie, to see me glaring at him. My kids think it's pretty nifty that I can jump and land without a sound except the shrieking curses of my knees. They know that when they can hear my tread, they're meant to, and doom is on its way. This whole step lightly thing is a very useful ability.

As for Lindy? Poor girl. She's the only young female in a house full of brothers. She needs the ability to move about gracefully and silently--for the pure-hearted purposes of scaring those boys half to death and collecting incriminating information. If dance lessons will give her a fighting chance, then I'm all for them. Bring on the tutus!