Dancing Fool

This year we are not in Maryland for Thanksgiving because we don't have any kids at Mary Baldwin anymore. Ergo this morning we are not running the Turkey Trot in Frederick. We didn't sign up for a Turkey Trot at all actually. This morning I awoke around 5 like I always do these days and decided to look and see if there was a Turkey Trot nearby. Lo and behold they're running one around the mall just a couple miles from where we live! "Great plan", I thought, "I'll crash this Turkey Trot by running over there to join it!"

Yestereve Cara was feeling silly and so decided to put on various tunes to evoke laughter from various family members. One of these was Bonnie Tyler's epic "I Need a Hero", to which I made up many a dance routine when I was in elementary school, imagining myself in a Thrilleresque progression of dancers across the Golden Gate Bridge (near which we lived at the time) or as a young Tasha Yar fighting through life on her homeworld with her younger sister. So when Cara started playing the song I naturally dropped what I was doing in the kitchen and came out doing my best flashdance, pumping my feet and fists at the high tempo of the music. Brittan was laughing so hard I couldn't resist going all out, swooping kicks across the room and tossing my hair about. Soon Zara, who loves to dance like me, jumped in and we were spinning around together. It was a beautiful, happy moment in which a little piece of my own childhood got to intersect with that of my own children. Then Cara played it again and as I furiously pumped my legs up and down a sharp pain appeared in my ankle, the ankle I broke playing football in high school. Ugh.

This morning lying in bed thinking about Turkey Trots I have, of course, forgotten about all this. The ankle isn't really bothersome to walk around on. So I get up and get ready to go with enough time to run over to the start. I put on my shirt from the last race as I always do and head out the door. Almost immediately I can tell something is wrong as I run down the road. I can feel my ankle collapsing inward as it sometimes does and I'm limp running. "I can power through this" the motivated voice inside me says. You know, that voice that keeps you going against all odds when the chips are down and you're dealt another rough hand. That voice can be great, but it can also be an idiot. Sometimes you just need to walk away from the table with the few chips you have left before you loose the shirt off your back too or worse. So I limped back home and wrote this blog instead. Now I'm going to go do some situps.

At least Brittan videoed the dancing. You can catch it around the second minute mark in her latest vlog: