Tweens... (eye roll)

So last night at Zumba, one of the women brought her little sister and her cousin, presumably because she was babysitting them. They were 9 or 10, and looked extremely irritated to be dragged along with a babysitter (but Mo-ooom, we don’t need a babysitter) to a class where old ladies go to sweat. (Not that we’re old, but to tweens, I might as well have a walker and blue hair). I felt a little bad for them. I mean, it was American Idol night, and they got dragged to Zumba. That’s kind of rough if you’re 10.

Kind of rough for the old ladies too. Because this class is fun, and high energy, and we sweat a lot, and we move our hips in sexy ways, and we sometimes think we look good doing it even though we are dripping in sweat. Nothing shatters that illusion like a couple of non-sweaty tweens with perfect hair watching from the side and texting. One imagines that they’re texting their friends about how ridiculous we all look. Instead of sexy Latin dancer, I found myself feeling like a sweaty old fat woman in XL yoga pants. Such is the power of the coolly superior tween gaze.

But then a crazy thing happened. We were doing a fun Bollywood number, and one of the girls pulled her size 0 jean-clad butt off the floor and started doing the moves small on the sidelines. With a little encouragement from the teacher and the sweaty old women, she came out and joined the class. I could see the desire to try the dance warring with her desire to remain cool and detached. The dance won. Sure, she was still marking it a little. I mean, she didn’t want to get sweaty! Then her cousin got up and joined in too.

We moved from the Bollywood to a piece that is half old jazz/Lindy steps and then moves into the hip-hop versions of those moves. (Yeah, I know... when you think of me, you think hip-hop. I’m just so street!) It’s fast and crazy in parts, with a super fast Suzie Q and some quick jumps and kicks. We’ve all been doing this dance for a couple of weeks, so it’s no reflection on the tweenies that they couldn’t keep up. But is it sick that it made me feel a bit better? OK, it is sick. I know.

Water break. We have been dancing for nearly an hour. Tweenies have been dancing for about 7 minutes. Big sister/cousin asks the tweens what they think. With just a hint of an eyeroll, one responds, “It’s OK. Kind of easy.”

If I had a slushy, I would have totally thrown it at her.