More valuable a lesson than how to touch my foot to my ear. From three different angles.

Although I don't want to underestimate the worth of that lesson. At all. It's served me very well over the years.

But the most valuable thing I learned in all those years of ballet was how to take criticism.

Taking criticism comes about as naturally to me as having hips that face my kneecaps out as sideways as my ears. I sure as hell wasn't born with it, it took a lot of work to get that ability, but it stayed with me.

*flashback effect ripples across the screen*

I was nine years old, and bawling my eyes out, swearing I would NEVER go back to that class. It's funny how certain you can be of the word "NEVER" when you're nine. As you get older I think you learn not to use that word so much, that you'll be surprised how often you'll have to take it back, except that then as age thirty looms in the distance, it's beginning to slip back into my vocabulary, mostly in reference to certain types of liquor.

But I was CERTAIN then, with all the hormonal fuel of encroaching puberty. Miss Hatch was so hard on me, I could never get the steps right, there was ALWAYS something to fix, my fingers were too stiff, my chin was tilted wrong, my grand jetes were sloppy. NOBODY got as much criticism as me. I must be the worst dancer, and this was her way of telling me.

That week in the mail I got a card from my teacher. On the front was a beautiful sketch of a ballerina. Inside Miss Hatch told me that this was her favorite stationary, which she only used for her favorite ballerinas, because the drawing was of one of idols. A dancer who was very good and very famous, but not PERFECT. Because NOBODY was perfect. So I was in good company, she said.

And she went on to explain that she pushed me because she saw promise in me. Promise which she tactfully and roundaboutly implied she didn't see in just everyone. Suddenly pieces of the picture fell into a completely different layout. She thought I was GOOD, not hopeless.


It was then that I realized that in much the same way ballerinas practice in front of a mirror to get better, constructive criticism was someone's way of holding up a mirror to you and say, "I think you can do better." If they didn't see that potential in you, they wouldn't waste their time.
With a little nudge from someone who gives you that picture of yourself, you can stretch yourself in all sorts of way. Foot to ear, even.

And I keep that card, even to this day, displayed on the bookcase in the living room.
Because unlike the ass I had then, so firm you could bounce quarters off of it, this lesson is something I never want to loose.