Ballet Class

It was story time. We all sat around in a circle on our rug and I read a book about a little boy who chose to lie to his mother about something that had happened. Somehow the lie got bigger and bigger and bigger and he felt worse and worse and worse. He finally opened up and told the truth and felt 100% better.

We got into a discussion about lying, or at least not telling the truth. I asked the kids if they had ever lied to their parents or to a friend. Everyone admitted they had and felt bad about it. And yet they might lie again.

I suddenly remembered a story, a true story, that stayed with me for years, and decided to tell it to my class. So I told the kids I had a personal story for them. This was it.

When I and my close friend Joan, who lived in the same apartment house, were about 11 or twelve, we took ballet lessons downtown in New York City. Our favorite part was getting to the dancing hall because we walked across the Metropolitan Opera House stage, the famous, real stage, to get to where we had our dance lesson. We loved it all.

Afterwards we’d go for a treat at a local restaurant. Once, on a Saturday, I made a date with a different friend, Carol, to meet and have lunch together in mid New York. She had a mid-morning ballet lesson and invited me to come watch. That class seemed so much more authentic than mine with a real Russian teacher, and I was enchanted. I decided to change to that class. I knew my friend Joan, who was a much better ballet dancer than I was, would like that class better also.

The next Saturday I went to the new class to test the new class. As I walked out of the dressing room I heard two girls talking. “If one more dancer joins this class I’m going to scream,” said one and the other agreed. “This class is getting way too big.”

I was planning to tell Joan to join, but the girls would hate me for adding to the class.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want the kids to hate me. So I didn’t ask Joan to join me and felt terribly guilty. I couldn’t fall asleep and was up till midnight, night after night. My mother asked me what was wrong, and I insisted it was nothing. I was ashamed of myself but couldn’t open up.

So, I said to the kids, “Thirty-five to forty years have gone by and I still feel guilty about not telling Joan to join the new class with me.”

Within moments of me telling my story, a group of the kids shouted out, “Write her, tell her the story!” It was adorable!! So I decided to take their advice.

We were both married with kids and as I said, many years had bone by. So, I wrote Joan and explained why I never invited her to join in my new class in ballet. She did write back and said she never got mad at me for that.