After executing a nimble dance routine at my year 8 pantomime, I was very surprised to hear my Mum and Dad (more commonly known to me as Jon and Donna) exclaiming with tender relief that I could ‘actually dance a little bit’. I enquired further and there they delved into my childhood, stories down pouring on me as if I’d unlocked a secret vault in a secret bank of a secret order. Stories about scabs upon scabs, knees crumpling under my own weight and my lack of confidence to do anything more than peek out behind my Mum and grumble a few angsty words of infantile stubbornness. Donna even went as far to say ‘you were the most uncoordinated child we’d ever seen. We really did worry about you for a while, Chels’ which made me analyse my entire mobile life in a flash and then I realised- bloody hell, they’re right.
I am quite possibly one of the clumsiest, most ligamently challenged people out there. Take day two of me working in a restaurant for instance. I was just hurrying some glasses of water to a table when a child scurried in front, so I swerved in what I probably though was a graceful arch yet seconds later, water was cascading down onto the child leaving him drowned in my maladroit mess. No amount of scrabbling to the floor with paper towels or apologising profusely could ever etch the ‘at least we’ll get a cheaper meal’ drones that boomed from the parents or the fact that all my fellow workers didn’t know me well enough to laugh at me, so instead pitied the inept, young girl that knelt basking in her sea of embarrassment.
I was recently asked to help a friend in acting out a mock interview with a celebrity and as I watched the video back, I winced as my elbows threw awkward angles, my hand swung sluggishly by my side and my whole demeanour oozed ‘I am not in the slightest bit comfortable right now’. In my head, this girl named Chelsea carries herself with- I certainly wouldn’t go as far to say grace- but perhaps a lazy ease that is warm, is inviting, is saying ‘I’m not at all proper but how do you do?’ Instead, I have realised that this is not the case. I am a walking dysfunction.
You may be starting to wonder the point of this, or how this has anything to do with camp. Have I sacked that all in? Have I hung my mosquito netting up for good? Well, not at all, my friends. This weekend I went back to Emma’s with Rickey, Anthony and Udi. This weekend I enjoyed swirling feverish coffee around my mouth, tracing my fingers down the binds of spry, new books and wandering around streets stirred with the sultry graces of summer. This weekend I went roller-skating.
Bam.
When the others announced their preference to the evening’s activity, I was more than keen. An image rekindled in my mind of rollerblading on my small patio back in Bangor-On-Dee and I thought- 10 years down the line; surely I can’t have lost it. As we arrived at ‘Roller Magic’, my confidence started to smart and by the time we’d paid our $8, laced the roller skates to our feet I was thinking ‘what in the bloody hell were you thinking, Chelsea’. These were not blades that snapped like roulette wheels around your feet. These were skates that felt like jittery platforms looming below me. When I asked Anthony how I stopped in them, he replied ‘you don’t.’ ‘Sweet Jesus’ I thought. ‘I am actually going to die’.
On the dance floor I was amazed to see people execute dancing that I’d call impressive in ballet pumps. They sashayed left and right, pivoted all around before zipping before me in a dash. I would have been quite content with just skating around like a cat in high heels had it not been for the fact that my companions were all more than capable of showing off. Emma swiped the dance floor with her ‘I brought them from home’ blades, Anthony twirled onto the back of his skates and Rickey, well, Rickey is an entirely different story.
Rickey, though most certainly not of the awkward, clumsy kind, was absolutely the most entertaining thing I have ever seen in my human life with my human eyes. Any dance move that is brandished as ridiculous on a normal dance floor, he tried. He twisted, he spun, he dived. He fell, he fell, he fell. There was one point where a group of teenagers on the side could be heard shrieking in amusement at his outlandish moves but I applauded them with my laughter. I was enthralled by his devotion to doing whatever the hell he wanted and I commended him for it greatly.
By the end of the evening, I’d accomplished skating a perfect circle around the hall with only one significant fall. I even tried a little shakey shakey disco action but this required me to stop skating and therefore left me terrified to restart again.
I’m afraid I’ll never be a fluid skater, a light-footed dancer or even a mediocre waitress but hey, at least I tried. Plus, you never know with these things. Things come in waves of fads all the time. Flared jeans, skinny jeans. Big boobs, small boobs. Sports cars, super-destructing the environment cars. Perhaps the age of the awkward is just leering in the future? Perhaps we’re on the cusp of the new vogue, the era of the cumbersome coots that is I? Perhaps one day when I slip and nearly drown a small boy with 4 pints of water I’ll get cheered and applauded and my picture will be put in a museum?
Unrealistic? Perhaps. But a girl can always dream.
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