red socks

When you learn something new, you have to be willing to make mistakes and look ridiculous. It's part of learning, testing the waters, and it requires equal parts bravery and humilty. Take language acquisition, for instance. I can speak French fluently now, but I still recall vividly the dinner party where I was soundly mocked for inadvertently exchanging the word "champignon" for "champion" thereby rendering a compliment about how someone looked like a champion on the tennis courts an unintendended insult by suggesting they looked like a mushroom playing tennis. You get the picture.

Kids have to do this all the time. They learn new skills incessantly. I don't think adults give them the credit they deserve for being so brave, over and over again. If we adults could muster half the courage and persistence of a toddler learning to walk, for instance, for some of the new tasks we face, we'd rock our world off its axis.

Of course, there are kids who are rattled by the demands of learning new things-- these are the kids who want to get everything right immediately, to be perfectly capable, instantaneously. It's rough on them. Especially as there often isn't much modeling going on among the adults in their world around how to cope when learning something new isn't going smoothly. They don't see adults colouring outside the lines in the colouring books, or spilling milk from the jug when they pour, or not making it to the toilet on time. We want our kids to be patient with themselves and laugh off the silly mistakes they make when they're learning, but how many times do they see us do that?

I'm having to be that kind of patient with myself on several fronts. This has been the year of trying new things for me-- making fresh efforts on the dating scene, learning to quilt, and learning to tango. Though I had no intention of taking on anything else new, I'm also having to come up with new ways of dealing with depression and stress. It has not been a comfortable year. It's been a year of applying the slightly cynical motto, "Aim high! Fall hard!" I think I'm managing alright. I'm much better at not taking dating too seriously, for instance, and am reassured by the fact that even a bad date might generate good material for the novel writing project I've got on the back burner. Quilting mistakes are greeted with a sigh, a seam ripper, and a second attempt to get it right. I'm very, very good at not taking myself too seriously with tango...

I danced for three hours this evening, with back-to-back classes. This gave me MUCH more opportunity to lunge, lurch, and stumble about as I work my way toward looking sexy and accomplished on the dance floor. What's more, as my fabulous Fluevog shoes are too sticky for the dance floor, the instructor gave me bright red socks to wear over the front of my shoes so that I could pivot and execute turns more smoothly. My pivots took a dramatic turn for the better, but I looked absurd beyond words. Tango is supposed to look like this:


And this:


Picture, if you dare, these dancers with the toes of their shoes covered in what resembles mini hand-knitted slippers. I had to ask the instructor to tell my dance partner to stop laughing at me. People stared. Never mind that my pivots never looked better and I was finally able to do moves that had been impossible before. Me? I laughed. It was hilarious. It was much easier to make mistakes and laugh wearing those ridiculous red socks than when I looked every bit the part of a "real" dancer. (I laughed without the socks, too, just louder with the socks.)

I had to give the red socks back to the instructor at the end of the night. Tomorrow I plan to buy my own pair of red socks, to put on anytime I'm taking myself too seriously. I will, however, pay a cobbler to glue suede liners to the bottom of my Fluevogs. There are limits.