Who's got the beat? (Hint: Not I)

Last night a coworker invited me to a hip hop class at our gym. It'll be fun, she said. You'll be great, she said. It can't be that hard, she said. ALL LIES. I'm scared, I said. PREACH.

I got there early, while a conditioning class was finishing up. The teacher was pretty hardcore, making her students alternate jumping squats, leg curls with weights in their knee pits and jumping rope. I wondered what the hip hop teacher would look like and imagined a delicate flower of a dancer with long, flowing hair. WRONG. Conditioning teacher IS the hip hop teacher. Woe.

She put on some beats for us to loosen up to. That's when I knew I was in for it. The ladies and gents around me were shaking their booties like they were in da clurrrb, whilst I did some of my patented robot moves and felt awkward. Teacher then announced that she was going to build on what everyone had learned the last two weeks with three new eight counts. "I'm a fast learner," I thought to myself. "I'll be able to pick up on this no sweat."

I caught the first three moves, which were a snap to the side with some 'tude, a punch to the right and a punch to the left. Then there was some jumping and some falling backwards and some "drive that car!" and some booty shaking and some dipping. As a lovely young man behind me pointed out, I looked a hot mess. The only part I could do with some semblance of confidence was the eight count of "walkin' it out," which entailed walking in a circle. With some 'tude.

Reader, I was so bad. It brought me back to my failed attempt to try out for cheerleading freshman year of high school. I felt like I was insulting our teacher, who looks like she's straight out of a Missy Elliot video, merely by being there.

The worst was at the end of the class, when she had half of us perform for the other half. Twice. I immigrated to the very back of the room where I prayed their eyeballs would gloss over me in favor of the overweight dude at the front who was dancing his big ol' heart out.

Actually, I lied. The worst is that when I text my buddy to commiserate about how very, very awful I was she insisted we go together next week and I agreed.