It was the summer before ninth grade and I was still soaring from having made the b-team cheerleading squad. B-team was a big deal in the ninth grade. It meant we got to wear our uniforms to school and decorate the football players lockers on game day. Somehow, I was voted captain of that squad. And I loved that fact for about five minutes. Until the responsibility began to sink in.
I thought being captain meant I was supposed to know everything. So when we had to come up with a dance to perform at camp that summer, instead of asking for help from one of the other cheerleaders, I made up the dance myself. I found my favorite dance re-mix version of Everybody Dance Now and worked late into the night.
People. I cannot begin to tell you how little I knew about choreographing a dance. But I was captain. And I felt responsible. I falsely believed that since I was in a role of leadership, I was automatically supposed to just know. To ask for help would mean to admit weakness, which to me at that time was nearly the worst thing imaginable. So I hid my lack of knowledge and forged ahead.
The day of practice, I taught that ridiculous dance to my squad. And they learned it, bless their dear hearts. For a short time, I thought perhaps I had pulled it off, had uncovered my savant choreographing talent. But then? Then we performed it in front of the Varisty squad, the squad that looked like it was made up of 7 pairs of identical blonde, blue-eyed, long-legged, perfect twins.
After telling me that my coolest moves were illegal in cheerleading, they did the worst possible thing they could have done in that moment. They laughed. And not the ha-ha, that-was-funny-but-let-us-help-you sort of laugh that you can join in and pretend like maybe you were kidding anyway. This was the lip-biting, pretending-to-cough, won’t-make-eye-contact, whispering sort of laugh. The kind where you get dizzy-hot and pray without words for death or a sink-hole or a disappearing cloak.
That was the last time I made up a dance on my own. It was also one of those defining moments, the kind that begins to shape you for better or worse. I had to learn to ask for help after that. I also had to learn that hiding my weakness is often worse than sharing it ever would have been, even in something as small as making up a cheerleading dance in the ninth grade.
