End of a Promising Dance Career

I must have been very young. I associate this event with the time we lived in Bellefontaine, circa 1950. My mother had taken me to a dance class during the day (I only remember going to one such class). I think I had a pretty good time in class; at least, I don’t have any negative feelings associated with it. That evening, in the middle of watching the Jackie Gleason show (so it was probably a Saturday night), Dad decided that I should practice my dancing. He took me into another room, put a record on the phonograph, and told me to practice. I stood there and listened to the music, but had no idea of what he wanted me to do along with the listening. He came back into the room and told me to go ahead and practice. I didn’t know what he was talking about. So he shuffled his feet a little to demonstrate. So, I did as he had, but of course, it wasn’t dance or anything of the kind, just shuffling my feet. I really didn’t know what he wanted me to do. After a few minutes of trying to persuade, then commanding me to practice, with the same results, he sat me on the bed and took my tap shoes off, told me to go see my mother, that I was done with dancing…for good. He took my shoes and went back to watching the television.

The word “practice” was just not in my young vocabulary, didn’t know what it meant, especially with Dad’s inept explanations (at least to my young mind). That was only the first salvo in a long-running friction between us, much of it having to do with “practice.”

I sat on the piano bench next to my mother as she played some old songs, trying to cheer me up, I guess, though she did play the piano fairly frequently in those days. That piano was an old concert grand, with legs so big I couldn’t get my arms around them. I don’t know what happened to it, as I never saw it again after we moved away from Bellefontaine, either later that year or the next.

We discovered that I needed glasses or an operation on my eyes around this time as well. Mom and Dad opted for glasses. And I wear the latest generation of vision enhancement (glasses) to this day.

To be continued

–LE