Dances with Swords

My yoga teacher knew my secret right away, and my personal trainer at the Fitness Centre said that she knew I was trouble as soon as she laid eyes on me. Whatever.

I try so hard to listen that I sometimes don’t hear what’s being said. I push when I’m supposed to pull. Stop instead of go. Naturally my family threw in the towel when it came to teaching me the finer points of stick shift, clutch, accelerator, BRAKE!

I’m uncoordinated. Some days I blame it on the fact that I’m left-handed; other days it’s lack of sleep or lack of interest. Perhaps there wasn’t enough Tai Chi or gymnastics in my formative years, who knows? Maybe it was my parents’ doing. Lord knows they’ve taken the rap for just about everything else.

My family was quite cautious about letting me try new things when I was younger. I already had a reputation for being a tad reckless, and was easily led. And I suspect they worried that I would turn into a nudist or join the Moonies the first chance I got. Admittedly, there was a Communal house phase when I was in my late teens, but I saw the light on that one PDQ when a house mate suggested we use washable rags instead of toilet paper. Hey, I might have been impressionable but I knew the difference between right and just plain WRONG.

I wasn’t allowed to have roller skates when I was a child because my parents were afraid I’d fall on my face — okay, okay, they knew me too well. They didn’t let me use pogo sticks (no comment) and they hated, simply hated, anything to do with skate boards, go-carts and sleds — particularly the kind made out of garbage can lids. But the oddest thing was that before they would buy me a bicycle I had to somehow learn to ride one first. Once I got that out of the way, thanks to a long-suffering friend, I had to take a class at school from a motorcycle cop named Constable Ron before they’d let me out on the street.

My family had certain ideas about the way girls should behave, and because I chewed my nails, refused to comb my hair, turned my nose up at dresses and preferred the company of boys and dogs to that of little girls, I was called a Tom Boy.

“It’s only a phase,” my Grandmother and Great Aunt Ida commiserated one Easter, in response to my outlandish behaviour.

The old dears finally got to my parents because, after one particularly ill-fated dinner, a decision was reached. I was to be enrolled in dancing lessons. If nothing else, I would attain grace by osmosis.

Now, these were no ordinary dance classes. Nay, nay, they were Highland Dancing lessons, Sword dancing, thank-you-very-much, which involved real swords (the best part) and bare feet. Somehow, I don’t think they’d thought it all through.

These were early days, when Scottish dancing lessons were uncommon, before the drama and athletics of River Dance, before anything Celtic — with a hard C — came into vogue.

Every Saturday morning I was dragged, tooth and nail out of the house, expected to smile broadly and hop from corner to corner around a pair of crossed swords in an elderly woman’s basement. I had to remember my left leg from my right, which toe to point, which arm to lift. The lessons culminated with a performance at The Oak Bay Tea Party, an annual spring fair at the local park. In retrospect, the whole experience was like a kind of puritanical version of Toddlers in Tiaras. “That’s it, Wee Margie. Kick! Kick higher!”

If that wasn’t bad enough, I had to wear a kilt. There is nothing more pathetic than a Tom Boy in a skirt. Except, perhaps, an uncoordinated Tom Boy in a skirt. I didn’t care what it was called. As far as I was concerned, a skirt was still a skirt by any other name.

I still can’t figure it out. Perhaps my parents wanted to prove that everyone, uncoordinated or not, has a right to centre stage. Maybe they were exacting a kind of perverse revenge on the residents of Oak Bay with the spectacle of their left-handed Tom Boy daughter dancing with swords. Who knows. I never forgave them. But then again, they were completely unapologetic.

Photo Credits

“Sword Dancing” Saline Celtic Festival @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.

“Become” Original Bliss @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.

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• Being Thankful
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• Don't Call Me Ma'am