In the summer of 1989, we were in the process of moving from my parents’ first home on Brookhollow to the house where I’d do the rest of my growing up. The old house was sold and the new house was still a few weeks from being finished, so we lived in a borrowed RV. (I often refer to this time period as “That Summer We Lived in a Trailer.”)  What was likely a nuisance for my parents was to me a huge adventure.  I lived to be outside, riding my bike and dancing in the gravel driveway.  (That gravel got a lot of my blood and tears that summer, but I loved it.)

I had one year of dance classes under my belt and had just discovered my sense of rhythm.  After a few years of walking into walls and a few scary tumbles off the school bus, my mother sought the advice of my pediatrician.  “There’s something wrong with my daughter,” she had said.  My doctor suggested a way to actively develop some motor skills. “Put her in gymnastics,” he recommended.  “Dear God, no. She’ll kill herself,” my mother retorted.  “Maybe something creative? She sings, all the time. ALL THE TIME.”  It was true.  “Dance, then?” the doctor suggested.  And so it began.

I shuffle-ballchanged into the world of dance, hoping that someday I’d be as good as my teachers, who performed a routine to “Smooth Criminal” at that year’s recital. I think that’s why my parents ended up buying me Bad that summer. Plus, CDs were still considered new, so it was probably slim pickins at the ol’  Sound of Music. Plus, my older cousins liked it, so it was probably what they thought was “hip.”  Plus, my love of the Beatles at that time was probably bordering on obsessive, so they were likely seeking relief from hearing the  “Help!” album on loop, seven times a day.

Still, I’m sure my parents were thinking more “Ben” MJ than “Bad” MJ.  That was the day of lyrics printed in liner notes, and I poured over them. They scoffed at the line “Your butt is mine” and they didn’t really approve of that “Dirty Diana” song (which of course then became one of my favorites). They could have done without all of the crotch-grabbing, the pelvic-thrusting.  Too young to watch MTV,  I somehow snuck a glimpse at the Smooth Criminal dance sequence. It was like discovering for the very first time was “cool” was.

The decision was made. That. I wanna do THAT.

So I started choreographing in my living room, whereby “choreographing” I mean jumping around and singing and maybe leaping from time to time. I didn’t have a fedora, but by god, I had a cowboy hat. And that winter, my mother thought she was losing her mind, constantly having to search for the companion to one of her white sparkly isotoner gloves.

To Part III