CHAPTER 12 -TAP
Dance ... like everyone's watching! -Shari James
At Helen Mixter, across the rezzy, Mrs. Bowdoin came into my 2nd-grade class for music. She had blue-grey moon shapes under her eyes. She said she drank a whole pot of coffee daily. That shocked me. I could hardly finish a yogurt.
She opened the cabinet with all the triangles, tambourines, and rhythm instruments and passed them out. She put on a record and said she would tell us when to come in. I froze. I suspected I wasn't good at rhythm, at coming in at the right time. And you couldn't do it without anyone noticing. That wasn't the point of music. You had to blast your possible mistake sound out into the room. She pointed at me, and I jumped the gun. I hit my bongo a second before everyone else did. It was humiliating. I decided then that I could sing but wasn't a musician.
I didn't remember deciding that until years later at an ayahuasca ceremony. I was shown how we impair ourselves and forget we did.
I was not not a musician. I made that up and lived over a half-century as if it was true.
