And Now You're a Lizard

Last week, I went with the two little girls that I baby-sit and their mom to a family dance class for children ages one to three. We sat in a circle with ten other moms and their toddlers in a dirty dance studio lit only by the outside sun. The little baby sat in her car seat, and the older baby sat in her mom's lap, so for the first fifteen minutes of the class, I was the dipshit in the circle without a kid who was playing the wire and bell tambourine all by herself. She moved into my lap when the little baby needed to be fed, and I suddenly felt justified for being there.

The class was led by a new age couple in their sixties. The man played the guitar and had a gray braid on the back of his head, and the woman wore large sweats and spoke with a Kiwi accent. We were supposed to act like animals for the second song, and the lizard impressions meant that we had to lay on our stomachs and flicker our tongues. I watched the other moms- were we really going to do this? I was not going to get dirty and look stupid if no one else was going to. As it turned out, no one else wanted to do it, so we just let sweat suit act like a lizard.

At one point, a three year old boy had a melt down and started hitting his mom. It was embarrassing for everyone to watch.